


Serendipity

by TheLastGoodGoldfish



Series: Not in Nottingham [2]
Category: Veronica Mars (Movie 2014), Veronica Mars (TV), Veronica Mars - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Death destruction other Veronica Mars-y themes?, Drug Use, F/M, Movie AU, Movie Spoilers, Post-Season/Series 03, Series Spoilers, Sophomore Year at Hearst AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-07
Updated: 2016-01-12
Packaged: 2018-04-08 03:21:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 40,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4288791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLastGoodGoldfish/pseuds/TheLastGoodGoldfish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During her sophomore year at Hearst, Veronica takes on your run-of-the-mill blackmail case: the clients hate her, the evidence is impossible to destroy, and her ex turns out to be a <em>bit</em> of a distraction, but Veronica is a sucker for a damsel-in-distress. Even if the damsel is an intoxicated, pissed off Carrie Bishop.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Client

**Author's Note:**

> Technically in the same universe as The Run and Go, but reading that isn't a pre-rec.  
> An alternate universe, in which Veronica stays at Hearst following her freshman year.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Exes, drugs, and rock n' roll.

Tuesday night before Thanksgiving, Piz’s new band has a gig at a nautically-themed dive bar called The Beachcomber, and Veronica dutifully shows up.

She has no idea what Piz’s _old_ band sounded like, but he insists—with a degree of passion heretofore unparalleled in her boyfriend—that the new one blows Black Licorice out of the water. Over an unremarkable crowd of mildly attentive townies (because, well, _Tuesday night)_ , Ars Nova performs seven pretty decent covers plus two original songs, while keeping up enough amusing mid-set banter that Veronica feels confident her post-set enthusiasm will be believable. Sincere, even.

The only real problem is that she’s having trouble paying attention. Her eyes are glued to Piz, of course; she sees no one but him, sips her IPA, smiles blandly up at the stage, but all she can think throughout the whole forty-five minutes that Ars Nova plays is: _Why haven’t you dumped me yet?_

_Seriously._

_Why._

It’s not low self-esteem talking, either. She knows, in a general sort of way, what might attract a guy to her, and she knows, more specifically, some of the things that Piz likes about her. They’ve been together seven months, and it’s not like Piz has any more trouble talking about his feelings than the average red-blooded American male raised on John Wayne and James Bond, so it’s not that Veronica doesn’t know where he’s at. It’s not that she doesn’t understand what’s good about their relationship. It’s just that she’s pretty sure they hit their expiration date some time ago, and they’re still not... expired.

For weeks—months, if she’s being honest, since the whole _Logan beating the crap out of him_ ordeal—things have alternated between flat and strained between Piz and her, culminating in a pretty painful fight about a month ago. He said some things, she said some things... well, no, mostly he just said some things, and she stood there and took it because she couldn’t really argue with anything he said. And after that, she’d been certain they would break up, that he would just dump her already and the niggling guilt that plagued her whenever he made her a mixtape or met her after class would be _over_ already.

But Piz didn’t dump her. He stuck with her.

He wants to “work things out.”

He wants her to visit his family in Oregon over Christmas.

It’s the adult thing to do, _work things out_. It’s romantic, too, in a way; it’s attractive to Veronica that Piz wants this enough to work at it, rather than just calling it quits when things become anything but pleasant.

Piz would never dump her and run off to sleep with Madison Sinclair.

Veronica pretends she didn’t just think that, takes a long pull from her beer, and claps extra loud when they finish the current song.

When the set ends, Piz and the band hang back to chat with the owner of the bar, and Veronica waits for him at her table along the wall. She wishes Wallace or Mac or even Parker had come out too, but they didn’t, and now all Veronica has for entertainment is the table of very loud, very intoxicated young people across the room. It’s a handful of guys—college age, maybe Hearst, but Veronica doesn’t know them—and two girls in short dresses whose faces are invisible to her from this angle, though she has mentally christened them the Brunette and the Redhead. The whole table is noisy and incomprehensible, bubbling over with the joyless laughter of too much alcohol and too little to say to one another. Veronica catches something that sounds like the punchline of a raunchy joke, and she hopes that the girls have been watching their drinks.

She’s chewing on her bottom lip, her mind drifting to dark _what-if_ scenarios and the taser in her bag, when Piz finishes up and joins her at the table. He’s flushed with excitement, absolutely glowing, and for a moment, Veronica is distracted. She allows herself—or rather, forces herself—to focus on her boyfriend and the fact that this is a happy moment.

“You. Were. _So_. Good,” she says, and Piz full-on grins.

“Yeah? The Electric Furs cover wasn’t too on-the-nose?”

“No, it was great! All of it was great!”

“And—uh...” Piz blush-laughs, but there’s confidence in his voice when he asks: “Did you like the second song?”

Veronica gives herself a mental gold-star for catching this one: “Desmond Fellowes. Very sweet.” She leans across the small bar table and pecks Piz on the lips. “I felt like Pattie Boyd.”

“Pattie Boyd?” scoffs Piz, as Veronica falls back into her seat. “ _Please._ I am no one’s George Harrison! I’m Lennon, through and through!”

“Uh-oh. Does that make me...?” But before she can finish the Yoko Ono joke, they’re interrupted by the loud and enthusiastic approach of the rest of Ars Nova—three other shaggy-haired Hearst boys, who are all still kind of in awe of Veronica and, by extension, Piz.

“Don’t repeat that John Lennon thing in front of the guys,” Piz whispers quickly to her before the rest of the band reaches the table, “Toby’s kind of sensitive because we didn’t play his ballad, it was seven and a half minutes long, Veronica, you wouldn’t believe... _Hey guys!_ ”

Despite her boyfriend’s warning about Toby and his apparent sensitivity, "the guys" seem to be floating blissfully in the region of Cloud 9 when they drag chairs up to the table. They’re all carrying beers that Justin—the twenty-one-year-old junior in the band—procured for them, and they settle in for a complete rehash of the set. Veronica lets go of her hope for an early dismissal, as the boys seem almost as interested in hearing her reaction to every riff and chorus as they are in animatedly recapping their _own_ feelings on the matter.

It’s actually kind of adorable, and Veronica smiles and nods, nods and smiles along. She wishes Mac were here, though. Wallace would be bored with this crew, but Mac would appreciate it; they would be able to share secret smiles, while earnestly assuring the boys that no, Grant didn’t set the tempo too fast on “Hotel Yorba,” and yes, the crowd was _super_ into “Mass Romantic.”

Justin gets up to purchase another round, and his absence around the table once again frees up Veronica’s view of the loud, drunk table she was watching earlier. There seem to have been some developments since Veronica last paid them any attention, as Redhead is now standing—Veronica catches sight of her face for the first time—and tugging at one of the boy’s arms.

“I’ve got a nine a.m. tomorrow, baby,” she’s complaining, “We gotta _go_. Charlie, c’mon...”

It’s too loud, there’s too much going on, for Veronica to hear this Charlie’s response, but the girl is headed for the exit with one of the guys a minute later, his arm draped around her shoulders as they make their way out, dripping in _couple_ aura. _Eight months_ , if Veronica had to guess a number.

She glances back at the table, where the brunette and three guys continue the party. They’re all drinking, but only the girl seems to be growing progressively louder.

 _Down girl,_ Veronica reprimands herself. _It’s just some friends in a bar._

Why is she always so damn suspicious of everything?

Just before Justin returns to his seat and obscures her view again, Veronica sees the girl toss back a shot and throw her hands up in the air, with a passionate “Woohoo!” that brings half the bar’s attention to her. Even Piz glances over his shoulder at the party behind them.

“Very classy,” he snorts, and returns his focus to his girlfriend and bandmates.

 _Not your problem, Veronica_ , she thinks about ten minutes later, when movement from that side of the room draws her attention again, and she sees Brunette stumbling towards the bathroom. She wishes Justin would move over a few inches, so she could see the guys at the other table—get a read on them. But of course: _Not your problem, Veronica_.

Besides, anyone watching her _own_ table might be equally suspicious. Veronica is a small young woman alone with four guys, and though _she_ knows that at least one of these men is trustworthy, that she’s only had one beer all night, and that she watches the preparation and presentation of all her drinks with nearly obsessive diligence, an outside viewer would have no way of knowing that.

Then, Brunette stumbles back to her chair, nearly knocks it over before she lands correctly, and Veronica knows it’s not the same thing.

The other table leaves before Veronica’s. When they get up, Brunette turns toward Veronica and Ars Nova, and Veronica gets her first look at the girl’s face: pretty, pouty-lipped, there’s a momentary chill in her expression, in the downturn of her lips at the ends and the lines of her heavily lidded eyes, but when the boys join her on her side of the table, she’s smiling brightly again, throwing an arm around one of the guys’ shoulders. She looks suddenly like someone else, which is so shocking because:

“That’s Carrie Bishop!”

Piz pauses halfway through his thesis on the hotly contested issue of whether they should open with an original song next time, and he looks up at Veronica, then follows her stare across the room to where Carrie and her three cohorts are making a crooked line toward the door.

“Uh—friend of yours?” he asks, and Veronica, still following Carrie’s progress with her eyes, shakes her head.

“We went to high school together,” she says. _I kind of hated her most of the time_ doesn’t seem relevant. “I thought she was in Boston. Northeastern.”

“Probably home for Thanksgiving,” guesses Piz, obviously confused as to why this has such a firm hold on Veronica’s attention. Veronica can’t really explain it herself, except...

“Her best friend was that girl who died on the boat,” she says numbly, which has nothing to do with anything but seems like it should be explained anyway. “The one with Dick Casablancas over Labor Day weekend.”

“Oh.” Piz frowns at his friends. “That’s sad.”

Over the hum of the bar, Veronica hears Carrie calling out, just as they reach the exit: “All right, which one of you assholes is calling me a cab?” and she breathes a little easier.

 

Half an hour later, Veronica and Piz stroll through the little parking lot across the street from the Beachcomber, fingers entwined, as Piz rhapsodizes affectionate on what a truly wonderful girlfriend Veronica is. He has his guitar case slung over one shoulder, and, all right, he’s a little tipsy after three beers, but it’s cute. It’s really sweet, and she knows he’s still trying to make up for their fight last month—still trying to _work things out_. It’s good, because to be honest, some of the things he said have been nagging at her. She wonders if he meant them, how much she is supposed to be changing.

She’s not. Changing. Not in the way Piz wants her to.

She’s not going to voice every single thought and feeling that flickers through her. She’s not going to analyze her emotions for him, she’s not going to sit him down and tell him the story of her life. If he wants to know something, he can ask.

He hasn’t, which is also good. In fact, it seems that he’s been more than satisfied with the efforts Veronica _has_ made. She doesn’t complain about having to socialize with people who aren’t Wallace and Mac, she puts in the hours, and is, by all apparent standards of measurement, a happy, attentive, normal girlfriend. It’s like a subject in school, like a math problem: she learns the steps, the formula, and applies it to the problem at hand. She shows up and looks pretty and gets better at smoothing over the rough patches.

Veronica shakes off a prickle of guilt, listens to Piz segue into a commentary on Toby’s ill-fated ballad, and they’re almost to her Saturn when a shriek of laughter pulls Veronica’s attention from her boyfriend and toward a silver Benz parked under the closest streetlight.

Propped against the passenger side door, her purple dress shimmering in the orange light, is Carrie Bishop, cigarette in hand and head rolling from side to side, like her neck is made of rubber. There’s only one guy with her now, in a sports jacket and jeans, and he’s leaning over her, his laughter much quieter, more contained, than Carrie’s manic giggles.

He has his hand on her arm, but it moves upward along her shoulder, then her neck, and he starts to complain: “C’mon, just—just... just finish the damn cigarette already.” He doesn’t notice Piz and Veronica, maybe fifty feet off, and Carrie sure as hell doesn’t see them.

“I don’t _want_ to see your view!” she laughs back, “I want to go to Cube!”

“Cube’s an hour away, babe, I’m not driving that!”

“Then call me a fucking cab, _babe_ ,” says Carrie. “I wanna _dance_.”

“The mating cry of the party girl,” says Piz, just before Veronica lets go of his hand. She’s stalking over toward the couple before Piz senses the change in her mood, before even _she_ can identify what she’s feeling, but she slides her purse off her shoulder and slips her hand to check that her trusty taser is there, ready for the grabbing should it come to that. She goes right up to Carrie and her suitor, and she loops her arm through Carrie’s before the brunette manages to roll her head in Veronica's direction.

“Hey, _Carrie_ ,” she coos, and the guy stiffens, his hands moving from Carrie’s neck to his pocket. “I know, I made it, finally! Let’s get out of here, huh?”

“Veronica Mars?” Carrie slurs uncertainly, dropping her cigarette to the asphalt and stomping on it. “What the fuck?”

“Who are you?” demands the guy.

“I’ll give you three guesses,” snaps Veronica. “And you’re not driving my friend here anywhere, so move along. Scoot. Skedaddle.” She shoos him with her free hand, while Carrie gives her a thoroughly suspicious look but remains silent.

“Look, I only had a couple of beers,” says the guy, “I’m totally good to drive.”

“Do you think that _helps_ your ranking on the Creep Factor scale, buddy?” Veronica pulls Carrie to something resembling a standing position, so at least she’s not slumped against the car anymore, “I said _skedaddle.”_

“I don’t wanna go with you, _Veronica Mars,_ ” Carrie manages to complain eventually, and Veronica really doesn’t care. “S’mind your own business, I’m _fiiiine_...” She stumbles in an attempt to extricate her arm from her would-be protector and grabs the hood of the car for support. She stays hunched over, face concealed by a veil of wavy brown hair.

“You heard her, she doesn’t want to go with you,” says the guy. “So,” he mimics her tone and gesture, “ _skedaddle_.”

Veronica rolls her eyes and whips out her taser, just as Carrie begins to dry heave. Piz is at her side now, or a step behind. He hasn’t said a word but his arms are crossed and he’s glaring at the now considerably more cautious guy, while Veronica waves the taser demonstratively.

“You were saying?”

For a second, she thinks her blazer-wearing Benz-driver will argue, but then he just rolls his eyes, holds his hands up in surrender, and swings around to the driver’s side of the car, muttering, “Fucking bitches,” under his breath as he goes. Veronica pulls the still gagging Carrie away from the hood as the car starts, but only when it peels away does Carrie seem to come around to what’s happened.

“What the fuck did you _do,_ Veronica Mars?” she asks, swatting Veronica’s hand away and tripping back three steps when the support is removed. “I don’t need your fucking help, fucking cun...”

“Hey, hey, hey,” says Piz.

Veronica ignores this. She takes hold of Carrie’s shoulders and shakes her, just enough to get her head in the right direction, and asks in a slow, clear voice: “Carrie, where do you live?”

Carrie taps her lips with the tip of one black fingernail. Pretends to think. Or maybe she really needs to think, her eyes are seriously glazed over at this point: "Uhhh—Davenport.”

“Where’s Davenport?” Veronica asks. “An address?”

“S’in Boston. Davenport Commons. _Commons commons commons_...” She giggles.

Piz, to her right, sighs heavily, but Veronica presses on: “Where do you live in _Neptune_? Where do your _parents_ live?”

That puts an end to the giggling. “’Don’ wanna see my parents,” whines Carrie. “I’m not visiting my _parents.”_

“Where are you staying?” Veronica tries again, but Carrie has become very fascinated with a sequin on her dress and she doesn’t seem to hear the question. She’s humming under her breath. “C’mon,” says Veronica to Piz, “let’s at least get her to the car.”

Piz doesn’t look thrilled, but he leads the way to the Saturn, opens the back door, and helps Veronica half guide, half push Carrie inside.

When Veronica is in the driver’s seat with Piz beside her, guitar case between his legs—Carrie groaning in the back—Veronica opens her cell phone and clicks through her contacts.

“Who are you calling?” Piz asks, eyeing Carrie doubtfully. “And how attached to the backseat upholstery are you?”

“Dick Casablancas might know where she lives, I think they’re friends,” Veronica explains. Anyway they were both on that boat. The mention of Casablancas Jr. catches Carrie’s attention, though, and she sits up immediately, throwing herself over the center console.

“Dick! Richard Casablancas!” she exclaims, and Piz’s winces at the heavy scent of alcohol on her breath. “I want to see Dick! Sweet, sweet, innocent little Dick,” she sings, and then explodes in another round of giggles.

“Innocent? _Dick?_ ” echoes Piz. “Now I _know_ she’s drunk.”

“Take me to Dick! I want to see _Dick!_ ” She cackles at the innuendo, but starts pounding her hands against the backs of Veronica and Piz’s seats. Her big brown eyes are both glassy and bloodshot, and she’s swinging her head back and forth. There’s something wrong with her, something very wrong with this girl that Veronica knew once upon a time, and even aside from the blaring howl of her voice, it’s incredibly unsettling.

“Maybe we should take her to the hospital,” Veronica mutters to Piz, “She’s on something.”

“Yeah, tequila shooters and tobacco,” says Piz.

Carrie drops the temper tantrum and becomes strangely earnest: “I don’t need to go to the hospital, I need to see Dick. I need to talk to Dick. I need to talk—to—to—to talk to Dick about something. It’s imp—important. I need to talk t-t-t-to him.” She’s stuttering like a broken record, and Veronica clicks on Dick’s name in her phone just to do _something_. The call goes straight to voicemail, and Veronica makes a decision.

She sticks the key in the ignition and without looking at Piz, pulls out of the parking spot, out of the lot and onto the main road, heading north towards the Neptune Grand.

 

Veronica tells Piz that he can stay in the car if he wants. She tells him twice, the first time apologetic, when they pull into the parking garage at the Grand (because she feels bad about this) and the second time earnest, when she helps Carrie out of the car (because _why_ does he think it’s a good idea for him to come upstairs?), but Piz declines (because he wants to help her), and the three of them make their way into the hotel.

During the trek to the elevator, Carrie keeps it together enough that they’re not stopped, which is fortunate since Veronica doesn’t recognize any of the people at the front desk. She doesn’t recognize the doorman, either, or the security guard by the bar, or the perky hostess conversing with a group of guests in the lounge: it’s weirdly upsetting. Veronica used to know this whole staff by sight, even if she didn’t know their names. She and Logan had nicknames for the whole security team— _“Uh oh, looks like Peaches is about to take his daddy issues out on the Night at the Roxbury twins over there,”_ or _“Come through the south door when you get here, Luca Brasi and the Pinball Wizard are throwing down over a girl, you gotta see it.”_ But now it’s been... _months_ since Veronica spent a significant amount of time here. Months since she’s set foot inside at all.

Carrie loses her cool almost the second the elevator doors close, as if she’s been waiting for privacy to act like a lunatic. The doors _ding_ shut and she starts to giggle maniacally before falling back against the wall. She swings forward again a moment later and sort of drapes herself over Veronica’s shoulders. Carrie would have the height advantage even if she weren’t wearing stilettos (compared to Veronica’s sneakers) and the angle is odd, but she smiles strangely and kisses Veronica’s forehead.

Piz’s blue eyes go wide, but Veronica ignores this until the elevator stops, drops them on the top floor, and Carrie gives him a sidelong look.

“Guitar?” is all she manages to say, and Veronica realizes:

“You brought your guitar?”

Piz flushes red. “It was on my lap, I just put it over my shoulder out of habit...” They’re disembarking from the lift, but he glances back at the closing doors: “Should I put it back...?”

“Let’s just get this over with.”

Carrie takes off, sprinting to the end of the hallway past the penthouse door. She can’t go too far, fortunately, as the hallway ends shortly thereafter, a dead end, but Veronica picks up her pace anyway.

“Hopefully _Logan_ won’t be in tonight,” mutters Piz, catching up. Veronica nods her agreement—Logan _did_ beat the shit out of him once, after all, she can’t really begrudge Piz a little residual resentment—but privately she prays for the opposite. On a purely practical level, Dick by himself will be absolutely useless in a situation like this (and really, in most situations—unless you’re looking for beer or writing a dissertation on misogyny in college fraternities). If sober, however, Logan will actually have a useful perspective on what to do with their fellow former Pirate, and Veronica—loath as she is to admit it (so she won’t)—could use the input, because she’s at a bit of a loss here. 

Carrie is making her way back toward Piz and Veronica, her legs crossing at the knee with each step, so that Veronica catches her arm to hold her still when she reaches them. Carrie smiles—almost sweetly, but her eyes are out of focus—and she points to Piz: “Whozzat?”

“That’s Piz, c’mon Carrie, we’re going to see Dick.”

“ _Piss, piss, piss,”_ Carrie sings quietly, but she stands, mostly by her own power, just behind Veronica and a little in front of Piz, when Veronica knocks on the door to Logan and Dick’s place. They wait for someone to answer.

Veronica has stood here a million times, when she was with Logan and when she was without him, and she tries not to think too hard about any of those times. She forcibly stops herself from thinking about Kendall Casablancas wrapping herself around him, from envisioning him that night in January, when she’d come here to talk, to make up, and they’d—well, they’d definitely made up. Not so much with the talking.

_After Aspen. After he slept with Madison Sinclair._

“I should’ve called,” Veronica realizes suddenly with horror. “ _Piss, piss, piss!”_ sings Carrie, and Piz shrugs. _Of course she should’ve called!_ Logan could have a girl in there. Logan _probably_ has a girl in there! He’s _Logan_ , for God’s sake, he’s _always_ got a girl! And he’s going to answer the door and she’s going to have to see it and—Jesus, she brought _Piz_ to this? What in God’s name was she _thinking_?

Logan opens the door. He doesn’t have a girl. What he has is: sweats and a Hearst t-shirt, a Killers album playing at a reasonable volume in the background, and a look of utter confusion. Two seconds of silence, and then, of course he notices Piz’s guitar:

“But where’s Denny Doherty?” he asks dryly.

Veronica relaxes. “Is Dick here?”

To his credit, Logan doesn’t make the obvious joke. “Uh—no. He went up to Sac for Thanksgiving. What...?” He stops, changes course: “Who’s that?” He nods at Carrie, who, Veronica realizes, has dropped her singing but seems to be trying to pull all the sequins off her dress. Her chin is against her chest, and her long brown hair shields her face from Logan.

“It’s Carrie Bishop,” Veronica explains. “We found her at...”

But Carrie’s head pops up at the sound of her name, and she spots Logan for the first time. “I know _you_ , Logan Ech _olls,_ ” she slurs, and pushes her way into the hotel room, kicking off her shoes and shouting, “Where’s Dick? _Diiiick. Dick-o-las..._ ”

“We found her at a bar,” Veronica finishes. “She’s looking for your roommate.”

Logan watches Carrie climb on his couch, his eyebrows closer than not to his hairline: “I can see that. What is she _on_?”

That’s about as close as Veronica expects to get to a professional opinion that Carrie is more than drunk. “I don’t know,” she says, and adds hopefully, “Can _you_ tell?”

Logan rolls his eyes. “Well, as the resident junkie...” (Veronica scowls), “I do have _one_ sure-fire trick to find out.” He opens the suite door a little wider and steps aside for his two other guests to enter, “Michelle, John, you might as well come in, since Mama Cass has made herself at home.” He closes the door behind them, falls back against it, and calls out to Carrie: “Hey, Bishop, what d’you got?”

Carrie, who has been rocking out pretty hard to _Leave the Bourbon on the Shelf_ playing on the stereo, stops to smile coyly at their host: “The blues, Logan Echolls, I got the blues.”

Veronica looks curiously to Logan, who translates, “Xanax.”

“Plus at least two shots and two mixed drinks,” Veronica tells him. Though she’s sure it was more, she only directly witnessed those four.

“You were counting her drinks from across the bar?” Piz asks, speaking for the first time since Logan opened the door and, consequently, reminding Veronica of his presence.

She shrugs, “Force of habit.” Carrie climbs up on the arm of the couch, balancing with her arms outstretched like a crucifix, and Veronica takes the moment of distraction to get a better look at her surroundings. The last time she was here, she was raging and swearing she’d never speak to Logan again, although that hasn’t really panned out—even before this evening—and the memory is a little embarrassing at this point.

She was wrong about the girl, though. Logan is clearly in for a night alone here; there’s a beer open on the coffee table, right next to his laptop and a stack of books and papers, like maybe he was studying.

“Midterm tomorrow,” Logan says, following her gaze to his school materials. Then he sidesteps the pair and makes for Carrie. He’s glaring as he offers her his hand to help her down from her precarious position on one of the three sitting area couches, but Carrie just beams in reply, takes his hand, and steps from the couch to the coffee table—narrowly missing his computer, as she bends over to pick up the beer. It reaches her lips, but Logan snatches it away. Now he’s smirking.

“I’ll share mine if you share yours.”

Carrie matches his expression. “You got hotter since high school,” she observes, and reaches down the front of her dress to withdraw a small plastic bag of blue pills from God knows where.

“And you got drunker, Madam. But in the morning, I will still be hot, and you will be _massively_ hungover.” He plucks the bag from her hands.

“You can only have one,” pouts Carrie, “They’re almost gone.” She tries to whisper, bending close to Logan’s face: “Don’t tell the girl scout, I took _two_ in the car,” holding up two fingers to demonstrate and nearly falling off the table for the effort.

“The girl scout can hear you,” snaps Veronica, as Logan slips the bag of pills into the pocket of his charcoal grey sweats. Veronica expects Carrie to protest, but apparently Xanax and alcohol don’t do much for one’s attention to detail—or memory, for that matter—as Carrie only hops off the table (Logan holds out a steadying hand she doesn’t end up requiring) and zig-zags into the kitchenette.

Logan turns to Veronica and Piz again. “Not that I don’t love the company, but why did you bring her here?”

“Dick didn’t answer his phone,” sighs Veronica, which doesn't explain why she didn't call the landline or try another of Carrie's friends, but _whatever:_  “I was hoping he’d know where her parents live. She was at the bar with some sleaze and—I just had a bad feeling.”

Logan nods slowly. “Dick should’ve landed, maybe he forgot to turn his phone back on.” In the kitchen, Carrie is rifling through the refrigerator and she lands on another beer; Logan hurries forward and swipes it from her, “I’ll open it for you,” he says, but leaves it on the counter when Carrie gets distracted by a bowl of apples. “Dick’s not here,” he says to her, and she just sort of watches him, dead eyed, like she barely understands what the words mean. “He’s up north visiting his mom,” Logan goes on, “So Veronica’s going to take you home.” He glances over his shoulder at Veronica, who sighs but nods her confirmation. What else can she do?

“Where do you live?” Veronica asks again.

Carrie takes a large, crunching bite from an apple. “I’m not going home,” she practically growls. “My parents are fucking crazy, I fucking hate them.”

“Where are you staying?” Logan tries.

“My car.”

Veronica feels Piz move closer to her, and she looks over to see him gape at the confession, but Veronica doesn’t buy it and neither, it turns out, does Logan. “Sure, you waxed your eyebrows, threw on the Gucci, and applied the entire Sak’s cosmetic counter from the comfort of the driver’s seat,” he says sarcastically, then repeats himself: “Where are you staying?”

Carrie takes another bite, chews, and doesn’t meet Logan’s eye. “Here and there.” She steps around him, twirls into the living room and stops just in front of one of the couches, eyes on Piz. “Who’re you?”

“We’ve actually met,” grumbles Piz.

“La Jolla,” says Carrie.

“Gesundheit,” says Piz.

Carrie falls onto the couch, giving the entire room a good look at her thong and Veronica hurries forward to close her legs.

“With Gia,” Carrie adds. It’s a moment before Veronica understands that she has finally told them where she’s staying—where to bring her. _La Jolla, care of Gia Goodman_. Gia is attending San Diego State, and it shouldn’t be too hard for Veronica to track down where she lives.

Logan sits down on the other couch, the one he must’ve occupied before Veronica’s arrival, judging by the position of his books and laptop. “Well now you’ll _have_ to take her,” he says, “ _I_ can’t. I’m allergic to Gia.”

“I thought it was shellfish,” replies Veronica, frowning.

“That too, but the symptoms are less horrific.”

“Well,” begins Veronica, crossing her arms and shifting her weight, “you may be allergic to Gia, but I’m pretty sure Gia’s allergic to _me_.” A glance at Piz reminds her that she really should explain all of this to him. Later.

“ _I_ never held it against you,” sighs Logan. _Accusing my father of a terrible crime_ , he means, and it isn’t until this moment that Veronica appreciates the fact that Logan and Gia Goodman are in the same boat, as far as that goes. “Must be because I’m so mellow and well-adjusted.”

“Yes, that must be it,” Veronica deadpans.

Carrie has now tossed her half-eaten apple onto the floor and grabbed one of the decorative pillows from the couch. She curls up onto her side and spoons it, humming the melody of her “ _Piss, piss, piss”_ song from earlier: she looks surprisingly content there.

“La Jolla—that’s San Diego, right?” asks Piz, shooting an inquisitive look to his girlfriend. Veronica gestures _more or less_ , but nods, “That’s like an hour away. Do her parents live in Neptune?”

“She said not to bring her to her parents,” says Logan—the first time he’s addressed Piz directly, but even still, his eyes flicker to Veronica on the last word. His tone is decided, but there’s a touch of something there, like he’s asking her permission.

“Well, I probably would too, if I was that wasted,” says Piz, while Logan drags himself off the couch again to dispose of Carrie’s left-overs. “But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have a good grounding and cell-phone confiscation coming to me.”

Logan doesn’t say anything, only scoops up the apple core and looks at Veronica over his shoulder. She nods subtly, understanding, because Logan grew up with 09ers and 09er parents. _Find a grown up_ isn’t his go-to solution any more than it is Veronica’s. He ambles back to the kitchenette and tosses the core in the trashcan under the sink.

“Where’s your car, Carrie?” he asks, but she doesn’t answer. He can’t see her from where he stands (except for one bare foot, bouncing off the arm of the couch), but Veronica can, and it appears that Carrie has begun to doze off.

“Carrie, where’s your car?” Veronica asks louder, nudging the hanging foot, but Carrie only mumbles in response.

“Carrie,” Logan repeats, exasperated, coming around to the front of the couch. “Where did you leave your car?”

“I don’t want to go, I want to sleep,” Carrie grouses. She closes her eyes and smacks her lips. “ _Tired_.”

“I’ll take her to my place,” decides Veronica, but Carrie curls closer around her beloved pillow and groans.

“I wanna stay with Duncan.”

“ _Logan_ ,” Veronica and Logan correct in unison, making regrettable eye-contact as they do.

“I’m-gon-a take a _nap."_ Carrie mumbles the declaration so it all sounds like one word, and it looks as though she’ll follow through on this particular promise. Her next one, “An’ then Logan’s-a-take-me-dancing,” seems far less likely.

“It’ll be a short dance,” says Logan. He lets out a heavy puff of breath, massaging his forehead with the tips of his fingers as he walks around the coffee table back to the other couch. “Leave her,” he says, “She can call a cab in the morning.”

Veronica glances at Carrie, then Piz, then turns back to Logan uncertainly: “Is it okay for her to sleep?”

“I’ll make sure she’s still breathing,” he replies, picking up his laptop and placing it on his lap. “There’s nothing else for her to do except sleep it off.”

“ _They always sleep it off,_ ” Carrie whisper-sings from the couch, but Veronica ignores this.

“She’s not your responsibility. I brought her here. I’ll take her back to my apartment.”

“Keith lighten up much recently?” Logan half-jokes, and he’s not exactly wrong—her dad won’t _love_ finding a hungover nineteen-year-old on their couch tomorrow morning, and it’s not like Logan has any adult supervisors to answer to. But Veronica doesn’t want to feel obliged to him either, so she continues to argue the point.

“He’ll understand when I explain.”

“But why bother? And have fun trying to get her down to your car. I’m sure Peaches will just love to see two college kids dragging an unconscious girl across the lobby.”

“Peaches isn’t on duty, it’s some new guy I don’t know,” Veronica tells him inconsequentially, and for a moment, the corners of Logan’s mouth twitch, like he’s going to smile. He drops his gaze to the laptop screen before him. Piz is at her elbow now, looking very concerned, and she’s glad Logan is paying attention to his computer again, because he doesn’t catch the suspicious look Piz sends in his direction as he shakes his head. Veronica’s more than a little sorry that _she_ had to see it, because she knows what it means. _He’s not sure Carrie’s safe with Logan._

She grinds her teeth a little, then says to her ex: “I’ll figure something out.”

“O _kay_ ,” says Logan. He casts his eyes about the room and locates, hanging off the arm of his couch, a knit throw-blanket with which Veronica was once very familiar. “May I once again submit for consideration,” he says, grabbing the blanket and balling it up, “Leaving her on the couch she has already _personally_ selected to pass out on, and letting her take a cab in the morning?” He tosses the blanket to Veronica, who catches it and—well, even if she isn’t sure about leaving Carrie here, at least she can cover up the girl’s bare legs. When this is accomplished, Veronica folds her arms and turns to face Logan again.

“You have a midterm to study for,” she says, “Why don’t you go back to your room and do that, and I’ll take care of Carrie.” She remembers a second later: “ _Piz and I_ will.” She glances at her boyfriend, and at least he doesn’t protest.

Logan’s eyebrows shoot up again. “Um—no.”

“Why not?” She takes a step closer to him. “Someone has to look after her, and you’ve got...”

“I’m perfectly capable of checking her pulse every hour, thanks, Veronica, unless you’re worried...”

“You're an idiot, of course I’m not worried about that, it’s just not your responsib...”

“I’ll be up studying for this stupid test anyway…”

He moves his laptop aside but doesn’t get up from the couch, and Veronica huffs: “I brought her over here, it stands to reason that I’ll take care of...”

“I have plenty of experience with _exactly_ this situation...” he points out.

“It’s not exactly my first rodeo either, Logan...” she counters, but they are neither of them very good listeners, and they’re talking over each other ridiculously:

“...no point in all three of us losing sleep because Carrie Freaking Bishop of all people decided to mix her benzos... _don’t even like Carrie Bishop_... used to call her ‘Gossiping Hag’ in high school... _Lilly_   _was the one who_ _called her that..._ not going to have you sit on my couch all night... _is a classic Logan_... this isn’t a classic anything... _refuse to listen to what I’m saying…_ you can’t just call any behavior you don’t like ‘classic’... _just charging into a situation without even thinking_...being falsely accused of a crime, being mistaken for Justin Timberlake... _instead of doing your school work, after all the work it took to get you..._ would be examples of situations that you might accurately call ‘classic Logans,’ but taking care of a wasted Carrie Bishop is... _into this stupid school, and you don’t even take it seriously enough to..._ not even close to ‘classic,’ it’s literally _unprecedented!_ ”

Piz clears his throat loudly, and Veronica wheels around to face him, ready to take a piece out of her boyfriend too, if she has to, but he’s just watching the pair of them with a downright paternal look in his eye that makes Veronica feel just slightly ashamed of herself. Similarly chastened, Logan throws his hands up in resignation.

“I guess we’re staying,” says Piz, and he sits down on the third, vacant couch. Veronica nods, drops her purse to the floor next to the coffee table, and joins him there. Logan stays put for a second, but then gets to his feet and crosses to the wall, where his stereo is still humming with the Killers. He switches it off.

He spins on his heel to face them, and Veronica crosses her legs and arms in what she knows is a combative posture. The fight seems gone from Logan, though; he’s all theatrics as he holds out his hands and quirks his head to one side: “Anyone want a cup of coffee?”

 

Piz falls asleep just before Conan ends, his head—blessedly—falling toward the arm of the couch rather than Veronica’s shoulder. Logan has kept his eyes moving in a steady rotation between his computer screen, the television, and Carrie, sliding past Veronica and Piz on the couch opposite him only in the necessary circuit between the rerun of _Late Night_ and the sleeping girl.

On the plus side, checking Carrie’s pulse seems to be unnecessary; she’s a loud breather, it turns out, just this side of snoring really, and every half hour or so, she starts mumbling in her sleep. Nothing coherent, but at least Veronica doesn’t have to worry about calling an ambulance.

The nightly news begins, and Logan notices that Piz has nodded off. He finally meets Veronica’s eye and says, just above a whisper—“That Ken Burns, huh?”

He’s referring to the talk show. Veronica smirks. “And here I thought you were just watching for the Jerry O’Connell interview,” she matches his decibel, and Piz doesn’t stir.

“Nah, the pain of the _Crossing Jordan_ cancellation is still too fresh.” He heaves a histrionic sigh—so quintessentially Logan _,_ it makes her insides twist.

It’s only been in the last month or so that Veronica and Logan have _really_ started "speaking to each other" again _,_ though Veronica wasn’t exactly _not_ speaking to him prior to that. Her actual anger towards him for past misdeeds faded sometime in the realm of his takedown of Gory Sorokin, but then she was gone over the summer, and their schedules don’t overlap much at Hearst. And she _did_ feel that she owed it to Piz.

(Because he beat Piz up, that's all.)

She could have sought him out all those months: he would’ve been receptive, she knows now, and plenty of times she wanted to. But she wasn’t taking cases at that point, and it just seemed easier to cut out that whole area of her life—the dramatic area, with jobs and danger and Logan. It was a short-lived experiment, though, and eventually it wasn’t so much a matter of cutting out that part of her life as covering it up. Now she’s not even doing that.

Not _really_.

Piz, Wallace, Mac, her Dad—they _know_ she’s taking cases again, in the sense that Veronica will say "I'm helping Sarah Webber find her stolen laptop," or "My boss at the library thinks someone's stealing from the Classics section," and they'll make "Crime of the century!" jokes, or wish her good luck, or whatever. But she doesn’t feel the need to involve any of them or give out many details, and she certainly doesn’t feel the need to fill them in on the _other_ cases: the portfolio of information she’s gathering on Sheriff Van Lowe’s corrupt patterns, on Jake Kane’s ties to organized crime, on the Sorokin clan’s activities in the greater Southern California area. For one thing: ignorance is bliss. For another: the more they know, the more danger they could be in.

Logan knows. It's kind of annoying, but also kind of not. He found out by accident—bumped into her on a casing of the Sorokin’s backroom poker game—and now, as often as not, Veronica takes him along for stake-outs or stings or interrogations of potentially threatening witnesses. Sometimes she takes Weevil instead. Usually it’s Logan.

He thinks it’s a mistake that she doesn’t tell anyone about it.

His exact words: “You’re a lot dumber than you look, Veronica.”

But what does Logan know, anyway?

For about ten seconds earlier tonight, Veronica was concerned that Logan might say something that would clue Piz in to her more discreet investigations. The fear passed, though. Even if Logan  _did_ let something slip, Veronica can investigate what she wants with whomever she wants. It's nobody's business but her own. 

She said something like that to Logan on a stake-out a couple weeks ago; he called her a hypocrite and proceeded to eat all her snacks. 

After the news, Logan switches to _Fresh Prince_ reruns, which buys them another hour until there is really and truly nothing else on television. Even the movie channels on Logan’s deluxe cable package have conspired to play nothing of interest.

Her host flips through a three-subject notebook, but glances up at Veronica between pages: “You could sleep if you’re tired. Looks like Carrie’s fine.”

Veronica _is_ tired, but Piz has taken up most of the couch, his tennis shoes burrowing into her thigh, so there isn’t exactly room to stretch out. She sure isn’t going to cuddle up with her current boyfriend on her ex’s couch.

( _You’ve done it before_ , she thinks, remembering Duncan, but that was different. She and Logan were semi-enemies, and she kind of wanted to piss him off at the time.)

Logan understands, though—at least about the couch situation. “You could crash in Dick’s bed. They changed the sheets this morning.” He adds a barely perceptible wink, and Veronica shakes her head.

“But could I ever live with myself? _Knowing_?”

Logan frowns sympathetically. “Valid,” and he sets aside his computer. “You could take this couch if you want. I can always go study in my room.”

Veronica snorts, because, “That was like—the _first_ thing I suggested, Logan.”

He gets up to go into the kitchen, shaking his head, and—careful not to wake Piz as she rises—Veronica follows. “I don’t think so,” he says. “I feel like I would remember a logical proposition like that.”

“I believe your exact response was ‘um, no.’”

“Hmmm, not ringing any bells, you sure about that, Mars?”

“ _Pretty_ sure, yeah.”

“Well,” He offers her a soda from the fridge, but Veronica shakes her head and sits down on one of the bar stools at the kitchen island. “I couldn’t just go for that idea right away. I had to fight you on it, I mean, for all I knew, this was just an elaborate hoax to get inside my hotel room to—steal the TV or something.”

“Oh my God, you’re a genius. That’s exactly what it was.”

“You’re so transparent, Veronica. Right for the high-end electronics, every time.”

“I was _this_ close to nabbing the stereo.”

“As long as you leave the Macy Gray CDs.”

“I’m _definitely_ taking the Macy Gray CDs.”

“Damn it, Veronica.”

He snaps the soda can open and slides up onto the counter along the wall, so his sock-clad feet dangle in front of the counters.

“So,” she begins, tracing a pattern in the kitchen counter with the tip of her fingernail, “what kind of sadist is it, exactly, that gives a midterm—not only _two weeks_ before the end of the semester, but the day before Thanksgiving?”

“Professor Galway,” says Logan with a sage nod. “Learn the name. Fear it.” He sips the coke. “What about you? Your classes get cancelled?”

“No—Piz is the lucky one, all his professors let them off the hook. I’ve got my two p.m. Abnormal Psych lecture. No test though. And Professor Benson practically _said_ attendance was optional.”

“You’ll be in the front row, taking notes, won’t you?”

“’Was planning on it,” says Veronica, and she punctuates it with a yawn, “Now I might just sleep all afternoon.”

“If you’ve got a hankering to take a three-part essay test on world history of the military in the twentieth century, I might know a guy...”

“It’s so funny you say that,” Veronica responds, “because I had that craving last week, but it _just_  passed."

 

 

Piz is awake for ten seconds before it occurs to him to open his eyes.

He’s slow first thing in the morning. Everyone knows this about him. Pleasant, but slow.

The slight delay in visual functions, however, presents Piz with the opportunity to realize that the surface on which he is awakening is not, in fact, his boxspring dorm bed. Nor is it the couch at the Fennels,’ where he’s been known to crash from time to time—a cut above the dorm fair, but nothing to write home about. No, Piz has fallen asleep on leather: leather that should be less comfortable than it is, as he’s pretty sure there’s no pillow beneath his head, just the arm of a couch.

It all comes back to him in the seconds immediately before he blinks his eyes open.

Logan Echolls’s couch. Neptune Grand. He slept here last night.

Piz squints into the dim light of the suite.

The first thing he sees is the laptop on the coffee table between him and another couch. Vacant. The first thing he _hears_ are low murmurs from somewhere outside his line of vision. He shifts his head and spots the unconscious brunette girl from the bar. Karen—no, Carrie. 

The curtains are closed, grey light peeking through the cracks, but the room is lit like it’s still evening: the strange purple and yellow glow that emanates from the walls in this weird LSD trip of a hotel room, reminding Piz of a high-end cocktail lounge—or his high-end cocktail lounge fantasies, anyway. Not that he has tons of high-end cocktail lounge fantasies, per se, but— the point is, it's bizarre that this is someone’s _home._ Then again, who is he to judge the rich and eccentric?

Piz squirms a little, rolls his shoulders (because a couch is still a couch), and finds the source of the murmurs: he can only see about a quarter of Veronica’s face from this angle. It's mostly concealed by her pale blond hair, falling around her shoulders. She’s leaning over the island counter in the kitchen, arms crossed, as she talks to Logan. For his part, her ex stands on the opposite side of the island, leaning back against the counter along the wall, arms bent at the elbow, fingers curled around the edge of the counter. His pointer finger taps a rapid beat over the marble.

They’re just talking, there’s an entire countertop and like three feet of additional space between them, Piz doesn’t know why it sends a bolt of panic through him. It’s irrational, and it fades a moment later. Veronica doesn’t care for Logan. He knows this. Sort of.

It's not something they really  _talk_ about, but...

“...All that Pirate Pride went to their heads, I guess,” Logan is saying, and Piz has no idea what that means, but Veronica snorts.

“What is it with this town anyway?” she replies. Piz digs his cell phone out of the pocket of his jeans to check the time—quarter after seven—“Aren’t there any _normal_ parents?”

Logan makes a face—one of those weird, unexpected _Logan Echolls_ faces that Piz sees him make sometimes, the quirk of the lips that turns into a wide-mouthed smirk. “Not in Nottingham,” he says—sounds familiar, but Piz is still a half asleep and he doesn’t catch the reference until Veronica shoots back:

“Vinnie does a solid Sheriff of Nottingham impression.”

“That makes you Robin Hood, I hope you know,” says Logan, and he ducks his head. Piz wishes he could see more of Veronica’s face. He wishes one of them would notice he’s woken up. He wishes it would be Veronica.

“I’ve always felt a certain kinship with the character,” she says, “Who does that make you in this scenario?”

Logan frowns, thoughtful: “The rooster is kind of a badass. Y’know—with the mandolin?” He mimes the instrument, and Veronica bursts out laughing, so she has to cover her mouth with the palm of her hand.

“You were picturing the Disney _Robin Hood_? With—with the foxes?”

“Of course I was,” says Logan, “Who else would—you didn’t think I was talking about the Costner one, I hope? Did you?”

“I think I _was_ imagining the Costner one actually...” Veronica’s overcome with the humor of it; she must not have slept that much, if she thinks it’s that funny.

“Veronica,” begins Logan, slow and deliberate, “I want you to know—and it’s important to me that you believe this: I am _never_ talking about Costner. Errol Flynn maybe, but—God, Veronica. Costner? _Costner_?”

Veronica’s face is in her hands but the giggles break through, and Logan hushes her. He doesn’t bother to check if they’ve woken either of the other two, though; his eyes are bright with amusement and fixed on Veronica.

Just as she's calming down, he adds: "And Weevil's Friar Tuck," which doesn't really help the Veronica-laughing situation.

It’s weird to see them like this, Logan and Veronica. Even when they were dating, there always seemed to be some kind of tension between them. They weren’t comfortable and joking, like this. Or maybe they were, but Piz never saw them interacting one-on-one; he didn’t see them interacting at all much, actually, and Logan was always in a bad mood, it seemed like. Maybe because Piz was there. Maybe he could tell Veronica liked him—

The thought reassures him, and Piz closes his eyes. He makes a lot of noise yawning and bumps the coffee table with his foot as he sits up, so that by the time he opens his eyes again, Veronica has stopped laughing and is standing straight, angled towards the couches, arms over her chest. Logan’s expression is neutral now, his eyes on Piz, too.

“Morning, Sunshine,” says Veronica, a little breathy. Nervous. It’s not ideal.

“The earth says ‘hello,’” Piz tosses back, and he gets up, walking stiffly toward the kitchen. A couch is _definitely_ still a couch. He makes straight for Veronica, who offers her cheek.

He kisses it, while Logan turns to the counter behind him, gesturing: “There’s coffee in the machine.”

Piz nods vaguely at Logan, and Veronica sits down on one of the high bar chairs along the counter. She has a mug of her own there, Piz observes, diluted with cream and—if he had to guess—sugar. Piz is a great believer in experiencing the natural sweetness of coffee, without all the added crap, but when he told Veronica this a few months ago, she made a face and said: “You just like bitter things. It’s why you’re into me.” Which didn’t even make sense.

“Well,” says Logan—and his voice has a high, strained quality, “there’s a horse, and a man that I must go see about him.” He inclines his head and traipses out of the room, hands in the pockets of his sweat pants.

Veronica doesn't watch him go. She just sips her coffee. “We can leave as soon as Sleeping Beauty over there wakes up,” she says to Piz. “I’ll give her another twenty minutes.”

“You’re driving her all the way out to La Jolla?”

“Hopefully just to her car, wherever that is. Fingers crossed that Sober Carrie is more reasonable than the drunk edition. “

“The Drunk Edition,” rasps a new voice, cutting in, “That’s what I was going to call my memoirs.”

Carrie’s awake on the couch, sitting up, though her eyes are still closed. She gets into a mostly upright position, then rests her forehead in her hands and groans.

“Where the hell am I?”

“The Neptune Grand,” Veronica informs her, and Carrie looks up, eyes in slits.

“Veronica Mars?” she asks, “What the hell?”

“Be nice, she rescued you from a bar south of Watershed Street,” announces Logan’s return, and he strolls into the sitting area, dropping onto the couch he occupied last night. “If Shelley Pomroy finds out you were slumming it on that side of town, your name will be just _dirt_.”

Carrie blinks at her host for a few seconds. “I should’ve known you’d be here, Logan Echolls. So you two crazy kids made it, huh?” Her tone is faux sweet, “Awwww.”

“Actually, this is my boyfriend. Piz.” Veronica hops off the chair, making her way toward Carrie, but her fingers brush along Piz’s shoulder as she goes.

Carrie is more alert now, leaning back on the couch, the blanket that Veronica used to cover her clutched up to her waist as she takes in the room around her—specifically the new introduction.

“Piz?” she repeats skeptically. “Like the candy?”

“That’s _pez_ ,” Veronica and Piz say at the same time, and Carrie drops her stare to Logan, a glint of amusement in her puffy eyes.

“Let’s not get too proud,” sneers Logan, “as someone who showed up blitzed at eleven p.m., demanding to see _Dick_.”

Carrie frowns, confused, as though Logan has said something incredibly deep and complex, and she just wants to understand it. “ _Dick_? That’s right, you guys are roommates. Is he here?” The concern in her voice is odd.

“He’s visiting his family for Thanksgiving,” says Veronica. “Why did you want to see him so bad anyway? I never took Dick Casablancas for your type...”

Carrie shrugs and doesn’t meet anyone’s eye. “Who knows? Drunk brain. It’s inexplicable. Where’s my purse?”

“You didn’t have one,” Veronica tells her, and Carrie nods. She glances at Logan.

“Bathroom?”

He directs her, and Carrie throws off the blanket and rises. There’s something sad about the way her purple party dress hangs on her body in the morning-after-walk-of-shame-full looseness, but Carrie gives no indication that it bothers her. She slips from the room. 

Geez. _"You’re welcome,”_ Piz mutters sarcastically. It’s not that he was expecting overwhelming gratitude from the girl who spent most of last night singing “Piss” at him, but it would be nice if she at least looked a tad apologetic.

Veronica opens her mouth to say something, but a loud shriek from the next room prevents her, and a second later, Carrie storms back, slamming the door closed behind her.

“Where the _fuck_ are my pills?” she snaps at Logan, who rises from the couch and shrugs, meandering toward the kitchen with an irritating degree of nonchalance.

“How should I know?”

“I know you took them,” barks Carrie, sweeping past Veronica and Piz and following him further into the kitchen.

“Oh really? You _kno_ w _?_ ”

“What, like it was Nancy Drew or High School Musical over there?” She jerks her head in their direction. Piz is properly offended. “Smart money’s on ‘Uppers’ Echolls.”

Logan doesn’t seem particularly troubled by the epithet, though Veronica squirms a little, “Please, that’s so junior year, Carrie. You used to have a much better handle on all the hot gossip. Everyone always wondered how _boring_ your life must have been that you had to obsess over everyone else’s business like that.”

“Mmm, _so_ boring, but watching you self-destruct every other week added such entertainment.” Carrie drops the saccharine sniping act and presses on: “Where are my pills? They’re prescription, Logan.”

“Yeah, I’m sure the pharmacy gave them to you in a Ziploc bag and told you to take four immediately following a dose of Jack Daniels.”

“Fuck you.” Carrie takes a step closer. So does Veronica, incidentally. “I want my pills back.”

Logan waits a beat, his eyes fixed on Carrie, his mouth twisted in something between a grimace and a smirk. She inhales deeply, jaw set, hands in fists. Piz has a thought that he knows is cliché: something about a crack of electricity you can practically  _see._ “You sure about that?” Logan asks eventually. “They’re circling the hotel plumbing by now, I don’t know if you’d really enjoy them anymore.”

It’s only an accident that Piz glances at Veronica just then, but he does, and he catches the smile that dances so briefly across her face in reaction to Logan’s announcement. It’s a familiar smile. Piz has seen it once before.

Carrie is less impressed.

“Fuck you,” she says again. “You owe me fifty bucks.”

She spins away from Logan and stomps back to the couch.

“Fifty bucks?” Logan laughs. “For _five_ Zannie bars? I don’t think so.”

“There were more than five!” Carrie locates her shoes and jams one foot into the violet stiletto.

“Not by the time you handed me the bag.”

Carrie pauses at that statement; Piz can see the moment comprehension hits her, the understanding of exactly how intoxicated she was last night. The genuine emotion passes, however. She puts on her other shoe and glares at Logan.

“Take me to my car.”

“Uh, _we’re_ giving you a ride,” says Veronica, stepping up and waving between herself and Piz. News to him, but Carrie isn't pleased by this development either. She eyes Veronica warily for a moment, like she’s actually scared the five-foot-one blonde might attack her; she doesn’t regard Piz at all.

“No thanks.” She stands up, folds her arms, and waits for Logan. She doesn’t tap her stiletto at him, but the effect is the same.

“God, what is wrong with you?” Logan whines, rolling his eyes, but he goes into his room and when he returns, he’s put on tennis shoes and is carrying car keys.

“And I need water,” says Carrie.

“There’s a faucet _full_ of it.” He waits for her to fill herself a cup.

“You don’t have to take her,” Veronica mutters, but Logan just shrugs.

“Whatever." It sounds a little sulky. "She’s Dick’s friend. That makes her _slightly_ less not my problem than yours.”

“Your midterm?”

“Not till eleven.”

Veronica nods, then rotates back toward Piz. “Let’s go.” She makes brief eye contact with Logan again but doesn’t say anything aloud. Then she winds through the couches, grabbing her purse from the floor and heading straight for the door. Out in the hallway, she almost jogs ahead of Piz to get to the elevator—possibly she doesn’t want to get stuck in it with Carrie and Logan on their way down. Piz doesn't blame her. Watching those two, it's like he suddenly understands what Veronica and Wallace and Mac mean when they say "Oh-Niner" with such distaste. At any rate, Veronica is completely silent until they’re almost to the ground floor.

“I’m sorry,” she blurts out suddenly, a second before the elevator doors open. “I hope it didn’t ruin your first real show for you...”

Piz stuffs his hands in his pockets and shakes his head. He smiles, too, because at least she acknowledged it. “Drugs, hotel rooms, passed out bimbos—it was the rock start treatment, Veronica,” he says, to which she smiles. “Although, there were drugs and rock n’ roll, so... I could’ve done with a _little_ more sex...”

“Well I guess we’ll have to see what happens after I get out of class this afternoon,” Veronica replies. Her smile is sweet. They cross the hotel lobby, and when they’re out on the street again, she takes his hand. Piz breathes easier then. Away from Logan, it’s more obvious that this is the way things are supposed to be. This is the relationship Veronica wants, secret smiles and snarky banter and dark, mysterious histories aside. This is the relationship any sane girl would want, and Veronica is a smart girl.

She’s already dropped him off at his dorm and driven away before Piz realizes he left his guitar at the Grand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mistakes regarding the lay out of the Neptune Grand penthouse suite (and the presence of arms on the couches?) are entirely mine. Thanks for reading =)


	2. The Case

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thanksgiving and the ill-fated voyage of the Serendipity.

It’s not ideal, but Piz gets Logan’s number from a skeptical Wallace. He understands his roommate’s doubts, but all things considered, it seems like his best option to go ahead and contact the unintentional custodian of his beloved acoustic guitar directly. There’s no reason to bother Veronica with this.

A few awkward text messages pass between them (non-aggressive ones, because there’s no reason to behave like barbarians), and Logan mentions that he has some errands to run, but will definitely be back at the Grand by three. Piz settles on four o’clock, as he’ll be on his way to the Mars’ apartment by that time anyway. He doesn’t cite that reason, though...  because there’s no reason to behave like barbarians.

And he’s man enough to admit it: because Logan Echolls still scares him a little.

So, at a few minutes before four in the afternoon, Piz once again finds himself walking through the glass doors of the swankiest hotel in Neptune.

Now, most likely, the heavily perfumed WASP-looking middle-aged lady by the check-out desk doesn’t give him a second glance. And sure, the Wall Street broker type in full Brooks Brothers ensemble (featuring optional golfing accessories!) has no cause to pay him any heed at all. But while Piz strolls across the lobby, it sure  _feels_ like they’re judging him in his sneakers and sixty dollar jeans. On the elevator ride up, he reminds himself that he once tended to a rock legend in this very hotel. He has as much right to be here as anyone.

Still, he speed-walks to Logan’s room on the penthouse floor, eager to get this over with A.S.A.P.

He anticipates a knock but finds the door slightly ajar. It’s not like other hotel doors—the ones that just swing shut automatically. (Piz remembers once getting not-quite-accidentally locked out of a room at the Holiday Inn while on vacation in Seattle with his  _so hilarious_ cousins). This one is just a regular old door except with a card slot instead of a keyhole, and about three inches of the suite are visible from where Piz stands.

It seems like a trap. Piz is prepared to knock anyway—that awkward, stick-your-head-in-and-say- _hello_ move—when he hears the music of guitar strings emanating from within. Which can only mean—

_Someone is playing his baby._

The twangs of what might be a G-chord draw him into the room immediately.

The girl from last night... Carrie Whatsername... sits on the couch. Logan is nowhere to be seen, but he could probably be dancing a jig in the center of the coffee table, and Piz doubts he would notice. Carrie Seriously-What-Is-Her-Last-Name has Piz’s guitar on her lap—and he’s suddenly  _so_  grateful he didn’t play the Gretsch last night!

But then, it’s not like she’s hurting the six-string, is she? On the contrary, her form is impeccable, the black shoulder strap keeps the instrument steady, and she’s strumming out and singing a slow, soulful rendition of  _Dream a Little Dream of Me_.

He fully enters the room on “... _Seem to whisper I love you_...” but Carrie is so lost in it, she doesn’t acknowledge his arrival at all. “ _Birds singing in a sycamore tree..._   _dream a little dream of me_...”

She has a beautiful voice, and Piz wonders if she remembers Logan’s Mama Cass joke from last night.

“ _Say nighty-night and kiss me, just hold me tight and tell me you’ll miss me...”_

She’s changed her clothes since Piz last saw her. Washed her face, too. Without all that fake, sparkly gunk, she’s much prettier. Her cherry red dress is short and looks like it’s made out of spandex—more appropriate for a nightclub than an acoustic jam session, though she has incongruously paired it with what appears to be a man’s brown hoodie.

“ _While I’m alone and blue as can be, dream a little dream of me...”_

Piz has all but forgotten his irritation that she is playing his guitar without permission. He is too overcome with the surrealism of the vision... this Hilton-esque socialite dressed partway to the nines and crooning out oldies. And playing her own accompaniment to boot!

When Carrie lifts her head and lilts, “ _Stars fading, but I linger on, dear_...” Piz is convinced that this girl should be famous. She should go on, like, _American Idol_  or something, because seriously, she’s got something. That  _it_  factor, that draws your eyes to her and makes the whole room seem like it was built around her, centered on her, for her.

And when she’s famous, that’ll make  _two_  rock stars that Piz has tended to in this hotel, which will  _definitely_ be a story for the memoirs. He imagines seeing her on the cover of  _Billboard_ and thinking, “I remember when.”

_“Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you_

_Sweet dreams that leave all worries far behind you_

_But in your dreams whatever they be—_

_Dream a little dream of me...”_

When she finishes, Carrie heaves a great sigh and drops her gaze once more to the instrument in her hands, a shiny curtain of brown hair mostly concealing her face. Piz is reluctant to speak and break the spell. He doesn’t even know if she has detected his presence, because she certainly hasn’t acknowledged it yet, but then, in a tone that is three parts sweet and ten parts sour, she drawls: “I know—I just blew your mind, right?” There’s no reason she has to sound so darn acerbic about it, but she does. She looks up and smiles at Piz. No, she smirks.

“Pez, right?”

“Piz.”

“Right.” Carrie smacks her lips. “You wouldn’t think I’d have trouble with that one.”

“Well, my first name is ‘Stosh,’ if that’s easier.”

She stares at him. “I’m so sorry.”

“My parents were cultists,” Piz jokes.

“And sadists, evidently,” she replies, while slipping the guitar strap from her shoulders. She places the instrument back inside the case propped up against the couch. “Hope you don’t mind I borrowed the Gibson. I was very careful. And I tuned it for you.”

“Uh—it was already in tune...”

“Sure it was.”

He decides to let that one go, approaching and then leaning over the back of the couch opposite her. “You’re really good,” he says. “Where’d you learn to play?”

Carrie snorts. “Well,” she begins seriously, “one day, when I was a little girl, a traveling magician came to my village and agreed to teach me the mysterious ways of the guitar, but in return, I had to promise him my first born child.” Piz rolls his eyes, and Carrie sits back on the couch. “Same way everyone learns: I got a book, took some lessons. Practiced daily, twice on Sundays, drank my milk, stayed in school.”

“Really?” says Piz, “Because a traveling magician  _actually_ came to my village...” Carrie softens a little: a fraction of the acidity in her smile fades. “I like the song choice, though,” Piz goes on, “The Mamas and the Papas? Or were you going more for the old school—Doris Day, Ella Fitzgerald?”

The smile turns a little ironic, and Carrie glances at the half-open bedroom door to her right. “Seemed appropriate,” she says, like it’s an inside joke with herself. For the benefit of her company, she adds: “I’ve got a thing for the sixties and seventies. My mom indoctrinated me from a young age with the pop from her glory days. Carole King, Linda Ronstadt, Carly Simon.” It’s nostalgic now, the smile Carrie wears. “Then in high school, I wanted to be Janis Joplin.”

Piz is about to ask her if she plans to pursue it, the music, when Logan’s voice interjects, “Well you’ve already got the drug habit.”

He’s leaning against the door frame of his bedroom, hands in the pockets of his khakis, one leg crossed over the other, so the toe of his shoe balances on the floor at a right angle. Apparently some people just don’t appreciate art. Piz expects Carrie to balk—he would expect anyone to balk at that kind of entrance—but Carrie grins up at Logan.

“Remind you of home?” she simpers.

Logan gives a little bow of his head, loosening up and strolling into the room.

“Hi, Piz.” No eye contact there. To Carrie: “Give the guy his guitar.”

“I wasn’t keeping it from him,” shrugs Carrie, and she closes up the case before gesturing,  _it’s all yours_ to Piz.

He walks around the sofa and sits down beside her, securing the snaps on the case as he asks: “So you didn’t end up going back to San Diego?”

Carrie shakes her head. “The friend I was crashing with is visiting her mom for Thanksgiving, turns out. Logan here...” She shoots a sarcastic smile to Logan, who is now rummaging through the fridge, “generously offered to let me crash with him.”

“By which she means I didn’t call security or forcibly eject her when she showed up and decided to camp out here.”

“What? You’ve got an extra bed until Dick comes back anyway, and _he_ doesn’t mind _.”_ Carrie rises from the couch and weaves toward the bedroom that must belong to Dick, “It’s just for tonight, and I’m going out anyway.” She pauses on the threshold, “Maybe I’ll get lucky and not come back at all.”

“All that Catholic education really made an impression,” says Logan, pulling several items in plastic bags from the refrigerator and tossing them on the counter.

“You gotta learn the rules to break ‘em,” Carrie singsongs. “What were  _your_ parents again, Logan? Scientologists? Buddhists?”

“Narcissists,” he corrects.

Carrie is laughing as she disappears into her—or Dick’s—bedroom. Piz finds that he’s been holding his breath, and he releases it out now.

“Sorry about that,” Logan mutters, all his bantering confidence gone with Carrie. “I didn’t tell her she could play your guitar, I guess she just picked it up...”

“Oh.” Piz frowns. He doesn’t care about that anymore. “No, it’s fine. Uh, thanks,” But then he’s unsure what he is supposed to be thanking Logan for, anyway. Logan’s puzzled frown suggests he is equally clueless. “For not calling security or forcibly ejecting the guitar,” Piz concludes lamely, but Logan is gracious enough to respond with a partially amused bend of the lips and a quick head jerk.

There’s a beat or two of silence, then Logan picks up a hunk of bread and waves it in the air: “Turkey on French roll?”

When Piz realizes he is being offered one, he shakes his head and hops up from the couch that he’s been angled awkwardly on. “I should probably get going, actually,” he says and takes up the guitar case.

Logan nods, his body relaxing at the prospect. “Big Thanksgiving plans?” he asks, eyes on the sandwich roll again, and Piz wonders if he has stumbled into some alternate universe where party girls have semi-original Cass Elliot covers, and Logan Echolls asks polite questions.

“Not really, just dinner at—the girlfriend’s.”

 _So much for not bringing up Veronica_. Piz doesn’t wince at his own slip, though. He actively stops himself from wincing. He will  _not_  wince.  _Do not show weakness, Stosh Piznarski, he can smell your fear._

Logan doesn’t present much of a reaction beyond another nod. “Cool, well—happy Turkey Day.”

It occurs to Piz that maybe Logan had the same Thanksgiving scheduled last year. Maybe he slept on the Mars’ couch Wednesday night and helped prepare the meal Thursday morning, as Piz plans to. Veronica created the schedule for the next two days independently, so maybe this is some kind of long-standing tradition. And just how long were Logan and Veronica together, anyway? It’s an odd thing not to know. Did Logan spend last Thanksgiving talking football with Mr. Mars and making cracks about Veronica’s pies?

Piz doubts it. For one thing—Keith dislikes Logan. Everyone knows this.

“You too, man,” he says.

He thinks he’s home free after that. He makes it out of the sitting area and almost to the front door, when Logan’s voice calls out behind him: “Wait a sec, sorry, just...” Piz partially turns, and Logan is stalking out of the kitchen. He stops abruptly about halfway to his guest and his expression, strangely, looks like it belongs on a twelve-year-old _en route_ to the principal’s office, though he’s got his thumbs hooked into the back of his jeans and his shoulders are straight. He begins: “This is gonna sound weird, so hear me out, but—I think it’s good...” He motions with one hand, a flat suppliant palm that balls into a fist as he frowns and changes course: “I’m glad that Veronica’s with—someone like you. Not, y’know, an asshole.”

“Oh...”

“Which I’m sure is weird for you to hear,” Logan hastens on, “because all of Veronica’s exes that  _you_  know are absolute  _kittens_ , but still...”

Self-deprecation from Logan Echolls: it’s  _beyond_  weird. Piz doesn’t hate it.

“I’m just...” Logan closes his eyes for a second, screws up his face into a frustrated grimace, then releases and concludes: “I’m trying to say—and this is despite appearances: I’m glad you weren’t the one who... y’know.”  _Made the sex tape_ , Piz substitutes but doesn’t vocalize. “And I’m really sorry I—well... you know...”  _Beat the crap out of you._

“Yeah, I remember.” Piz inhales sharply and shrugs. “Yeah, man, it’s cool—I’m… thanks.”

Logan gives another jerk of his head, another nod.

It’s only after he has made a full retreat, down the elevator, across the lobby, and up the street, that Piz realizes he probably sounded like a complete ass. He didn’t mean to. It was a gesture of decency on Logan’s part, but Piz's capacity for appropriate reciprocation had been severely limited by shock. Gestures of decency from Logan Echolls were even more bizarre than self-deprecation.

He’s at his car before he really works through the mechanics of the exchange, and the conclusion he reaches is the weirdest of them all.

Logan is  _intimidated_ by him. Like, he’s  _afraid_ of Piz. The stilted formality, the unsolicited ( _un-witnessed_ _)_ apology: he’s seeking Piz’s approval.

What exactly Logan hopes to gain from said approval is impossible to say for sure, unless he’s thinking Piz will,  _what_ , go home and put in a good word for him to Veronica? Besides that, there’s a slim chance that Logan is genuinely trying to make a dent in his assholery, which—okay, Piz is all for that, if it means he’s never at the mercy of those fists again. It’s not like there’s any remaining doubt regarding the “ _who would win in a fight_?” question. It’s not like there was ever much doubt to begin with.

But then, in all honesty, Piz is  _almost_ all for a Logan Echolls Redemption Story. A small ( _truly tiny, minuscule_ ) part of him prefers a Logan who is a clear cut enemy. It’s why the thin ( _skeletal_ ) silver lining of the whole  _having-his-ass-handed-to-him_ incident was that it meant Logan became Public Enemy Number One. It’s not that Piz has any doubts about Veronica’s fidelity, but these two have so much history... even Wallace once thought it was a mistake, getting in the middle of them.

The thing is: he’s not in the middle of anything anymore. He’s been with Veronica seven months—his second longest relationship ever (nine months with Katelin Turnbull in the tenth grade, if anyone’s wondering). He’s not in the middle of it, he  _is_ it. If anything,  _Logan_  is the extraneous character in this whole scenario.

Even if sometimes, like when the two of them were talking in the kitchen this morning, that doesn’t necessarily feel like the case.

Still—the apology doesn’t suck. He probably shouldn’t mention it to Veronica, though.

 

Veronica is already home from class when Piz arrives at half past four. She has  _Anchorman_ playing on the television and is rolling out pie crusts in the kitchen when she responds to Piz’s knock with a shouted, “Come in!”

The dog yelps at the door until Piz enters, at which point he calms down and slinks into the living room, curling up on the floor in front of the couch.

“Clearly I’m a disappointment,” Piz remarks. “I think he was expecting your dad.” Veronica ignores this, watching him with raised eyebrows.

“Guitar?” she asks, amused. He meant to bring it inside this time, and he drops it—with his overnight bag—on the living room couch. Then he joins Veronica in the kitchen.

Not quite seriously, he says: “I'm going to serenade you. How do you feel about Sonic Youth? Also, I’ve learned my lesson about leaving valuables in the car.”

Veronica smirks. “Know any Michelle Branch?”

“Ick.” Piz kisses her on the cheek, plays it cool about how much he enjoys the scent of her sugary-sweet perfume, and then leans back to watch his perfectly adorable girlfriend bake. “I had to pick it up from the Neptune Grand anyway,” he adds, and, all right, he’s gauging her reaction a little. It’s non-existent for the moment. The frown and the creases in her forehead were already there—probably from the effort she’s putting into the pie dough. “I left it at the hotel this morning, go figure.”

“Oh.” Veronica huffs a strand of hair out of her eyes. “Did you see Logan?”

“And Carrie. What’s her last name again?”

“Bishop. She was still there?”

“I think she left and came back. She plays pretty well.”

“Plays?”

“Guitar.”

Veronica pauses. “Did you two _jam_?” she asks, the line of her mouth twitching in a slight, sardonic smile.

“No, but  _she_  did. No need for jealousy here.” He leans forward to peck her on the cheek again, “If she were to  _jam_  with anyone, my money’s on Logan. Those two are like Sid and Nancy.” He remembers his observation from earlier and deems it clever enough to repeat aloud: “I think I finally understand what an 'oh-niner' is.”

“I’m not jealous,” Veronica quickly shuts down his joking accusation. She picks up the pie crust, placing it gently in a glass pie plate. “I hope it wasn’t awkward. You could’ve just asked me to get the guitar for you.”

“It wasn’t that bad.” Despite his earlier resolution, he finds himself tempted to mention Logan’s impromptu apology. There’s no reason  _not_ to. He might as well give credit where credit is due. Logan was a stand-up guy.

It’s not like this a test.

“Actually,” he begins, scuffing his toe against the kitchen linoleum, “I had an interesting conversation with Logan.”

“Not about dogs, I hope.”

Piz chuckles, suddenly nervous. "No, but... uh, he said he was sorry about punching me—last year, you know, when...”

“I remember,” Veronica unintentionally parrots his own reply from earlier, and she doesn’t break from pinching the edges of the pie crust around the rim of the plate. “I think you might need to update your definition of ‘interesting’ there, buddy. Here in California, last season’s reruns don’t make the cut.”

“Yeah, well...” Piz walks over to an open bag of potato chips on the counter and helps himself, “But then he was like...” He munches on a chip, swallows, does a funky, deep voice that sounds nothing like Logan but should convey the point: “ _It’s cool that you and Veronica are dating. Good job not being an asshole.”_

Veronica freezes. She’s still staring at the pie crust. “He said  _what_?”

“Okay, it wasn’t exactly like that...” (Maybe this was mistake), “But it was like—like he was giving us his blessing.”

Veronica wheels around. “I don’t need his or anyone’s  _blessing_ ,” she snaps, and this was definitely a mistake. “So what, you two just got together to ceremonially hand me off from...?”

“No, gosh, Veronica, it wasn’t like that...” His mouth is half full of potato chip, so it’s a little difficult to get at the nuances of the thing. Veronica is watching him with pursed lips and furious eyes, but at least she waits for him to choke down the chips and finish: “He was just saying he's glad I’m good for you and that he was sorry he accused me of the... the tape...” Piz does a sort of Rocky Balboa-inspired punching motion to illustrate Logan’s form of “accusation.” He hopes it will lighten the mood, but he also recognizes that he’s made a serious tactical error in aligning himself with Logan Echolls. And for bringing up  _the tape_. The two topics most likely to upset Veronica Mars. “Look, it wasn’t like we were sitting around gossiping about you.  _He_  brought it up in the first place. It was about... two seconds long, I swear. He was trying to be nice, for whatever that’s worth.”

Veronica considers him for a while: studies, calculates. No doubt she’s evaluating the validity of each of his excuses, so it’s a very stressful five seconds of silence before she relaxes again. She turns back to her pie dough.

“He’s such a  _dick_ ,” she mutters, and Piz fails to see how  _that_ is what his girlfriend extrapolated from the exchange, but as long as she’s talking about Logan and not him, he's okay with it.

Still, her kneading of the dough to fit the pie pan is a little more forceful than seems entirely necessary; the muscles in her shoulders flex with each press, and on one push, she nearly upsets the bowl of berry compote at her elbow. She swears under her breath and manages to catch it in time, but she doesn’t comment on the near  _faux pas,_ so Piz refrains from cracking a joke. She just starts scooping up the sauce and smacking it into the pie crust with a level of violence that he doesn’t think Betty Crocker would endorse.

And, well, this  _wasn’t_ _a test_ , but as far as reactions go...

It’s not ideal.

* * *

Piz and her dad think she’s insane, but Veronica spends most of Thanksgiving morning cleaning the kitchen.

She understands their objections: neither the side dishes nor the turkey have been prepared, and the whole room will be a mess again before the end of the day. By their logic, there’s no reason to get everything spick-and-span, only to have it trashed again by the end of the evening.

Except there  _is._ Veronica plans to perform most of the cooking herself, oversee the rest, and what Piz and her father fail to recognize is that the room—the whole apartment, dammit!—is an absolute pigsty. She can’t work under these conditions, can't be expected to function in this environment. You need  _order_ in the kitchen, all the cooking shows say so. The real surprise is that it has taken her this long to realize what a disaster the place is.

Consequently, she spends the hours of eight to ten-thirty a.m. wiping down the counter tops, dusting out the cabinets, reorganizing the dishes, straightening the cupboard, scrubbing off the stove top, and disposing of anything she regards as unfit from the refrigerator. She doesn’t clean out the oven, though, because she’s not a complete masochist. That’s a mess for another day.

The sound of the garbage disposal obliterating three-week-old Campbell’s clam chowder wakes Piz at about nine, but she tells him to go back to sleep. Veronica is an expert cleaner. Attempts at assistance will only slow her down.

Dinner prep starts by eleven. Veronica has already defrosted the turkey, and Keith performs the minimal steps required for its preparation: basically, two cans of broth into the roasting tin and then  _into the oven_ with it. He executes the task with a degree of ceremony that even Veronica finds excessive, and then, since the parade is over, he follows this display with a viewing of  _Remember the Titans._

“I don’t care for football, but I can appreciate a good football  _movie,”_ he tells Piz, who sits at the breakfast counter, shoveling through a mammoth serving of Frosted Mini Wheats (in the process, dirtying a freshly washed cereal bowl).

“Classic score, a heartwarming racial integration narrative, Denzel Washington—I hear you,” replies Piz, and Veronica decides to forgive him for the cereal bowl thing, because Piz makes her dad happy and that counts for _something_.

“Plus, young Ryan Gosling,” she chimes in, and Piz snorts.

“Kind of a pretty boy, isn’t he?”

“Mhm. Very pretty.”

Later, Veronica gets her way and puts on  _Miracle on 34 th_ _Street_ (the original, naturally), mashing potatoes and insisting: “It  _starts_ at the Thanksgiving Day Parade, Dad, it’s  _practically_ a Thanksgiving movie!”

“We could’ve just used the stuff out of the box, honey,” Keith points out, watching her labor over a masher and half a dozen boiled potatoes. Veronica shakes her head

“We’re doing it right this year, Pops. No potatoes that might be confused with laundry detergent, no half-priced pies that came in plastic, and yes, there  _will_ be Brussels sprouts.”

“Even if no one eats them,” says Piz, now relocated to the sofa.

“Even if no one eats them,” Veronica confirms.

The Mars family hasn’t been particularly enthusiastic about Thanksgiving since Lianne took off the first time, absconding with the family’s Honda Civic and the majority stock of domestic normalcy. Christmas is special for Keith and Veronica... neither of them can help getting festive for  _Christmas_ , but Veronica feels that she has dropped the ball a little on Thanksgiving. It’s so oriented towards large gatherings and big families that she never felt particularly drawn to it as a holiday. Usually, they’ll do a turkey, potatoes from a box, watch the parade, and argue about whether  _The Last of the Mohicans_ can be considered holiday applicable (“It’s like a hundred and fifty years  _after_ the first Thanksgiving, Dad!”). But it’s never really  _special._

The occasion never feels how Veronica thinks Thanksgiving should feel—how she remembers from when her mom used to cook and Grandma Reynolds came over, and the house felt warm and smelled warm and (despite Neptune’s lack of seasons) exuded autumnal ambiance. They would sit around the dining room table and do that cheesy “Say one thing you’re thankful for” routine before the meal. The hand-modeled construction paper turkey Veronica made in school was stuck to the refrigerator.

Veronica stirs a pot of gravy on the stove and glances over her shoulder to where Dad and Piz sit in the living room—talking Springsteen albums, of course.

 _This is good_ , Veronica thinks, but also:  _We should’ve invited the Fennels._

 

Dinner is a success, though.

Veronica forgets to get the sprouts from the fridge, and she’s the only one to touch the cranberry relish, but the turkey is (almost) perfection, as are the potatoes and dinner rolls and stuffing. The bread pudding experiment could have gone better, but Keith and Piz graciously sample some anyway.

No one has to fake enthusiasm over the dessert though. Cooking is a mixed bag for Veronica, but she’s been honing her baking skills for years, and the three of them demolish most of the three pies—pumpkin, apple, and a mixed berry—as well as half a tub of vanilla ice cream.

When their bellies are absolutely stuffed, they all fall back in their chairs and survey the remains of the meal. Veronica actively resists the urge to get up and start cleaning right away.

_What is wrong with you? Enjoy the moment, Mars._

She gives it the old college try.

“Okay,” begins Piz, beaming across the table at his girlfriend, “Not only are you beautiful, smart, and totally kick-a... uh, Kick-A...” Keith chuckles at the self-edit, “But you can  _cook_ too? Veronica. You. Are. The perfect woman.”

Veronica smiles and tries not to think about washing the plates.

She fails.

Springing up from the table, she begins to whisk away the dessert dishes, with a smirking, “Damn straight” tossed over her shoulder. “About time someone around here acknowledged it. I’m looking at you, Dad.”

“You set the standard to which all other daughters aspire,” agrees her father.

Veronica hums the Shirelles song stuck in her head and sweeps scraps into the garbage disposal. The day hasn’t felt quite like she imagined, but nothing ever does... like rewatching a movie you enjoyed as a kid and noticing the weak writing and blatant sexist undertones. Thomas Wolfe wasn’t kidding: you can’t go home again.

Everything went as planned, though—that’s the most important part. No surprises.

Except the bread pudding. She’ll use less milk next time. 

 

As she kisses him  _goodnight_ , Piz makes perfunctory efforts to convince Veronica to let him sneak into her room, but he surrenders the fight at the assurance that Keith Mars is in possession of ears like a bat. Then Veronica strolls down the short corridor to her bedroom, exhausted and ready to put an end to all this  _holiday togetherness_ , when she runs into her dad, dressed for bed as he emerges from the bathroom.

“Happy Thanksgiving, Dad,” she says, standing on her toes to peck him on the cheek. “And I warned you about overeating, so don’t come banging on my door when you have nightmares.”

Keith smiles softly, then leans forward to kiss Veronica’s forehead. “Dinner was perfect, honey. Thank-you.”

 _Perfect_.

The gratitude is sincere, and the level of earnestness in his voice makes Veronica just vaguely uncomfortable. That's new: not the sincerity, but the discomfort as a response. Avoidance is SOP, and it's not like she's the biggest  _sharer_ in the world, but there's no reason a simple  _thank-you_ should leave her squirming.

Humor-based deflection comes automatically: “You’re welcome. See? Totally worth the day away from the office, right?” Keith frowns, his brown eyes scanning her face for something. Veronica is a case file, and he thinks there’s a clue to be found within.  _Move along, Dad, move along._ “What?” she fills that silence right up, “Do I have cranberry on my face?”

Keith shakes his head. “Everything all right with you, sweetheart?”

He asks her that more than he used to, and it’s an annoying question. Like he  _wants_ something to be wrong, just so she'll talk about it with him. If he would just leave it be...

“Everything’s peachy. Except that bread pudding, but I’ll get it right next year.” She kisses him on the cheek again and makes a hasty withdrawal.

* * *

Her dad leaves for work early the next morning. Piz is out by ten, headed over to the Fennels’ to devour the leftovers of Alicia’s Thanksgiving dinner and watch “the game.” He doesn’t know  _what_ game, but Wallace seems passionate enough about the sport and/or participants in question, so Piz is along for the ride. He invites Veronica too, of course, but she declines in favor of a semi-fictitious “mountain of work” to cut into.

Without a regular case at the moment, Veronica instead finishes some research and an outline for a term paper due in two weeks, closing out the early afternoon digging through textbooks and online journals for sources that will amp up her bibliography. She walks Back-Up, then plastic-wraps a plate of turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, and the last slice of pumpkin pie, which she brings over to Mars Investigations for her dad’s dinner.

On the drive home, she passes the turn-off to the River Styx, and her brain flips to the effectively constant open case files. Her on-going projects. The hard copies are stuffed under her closet floorboards. 

One thing: there’s a new bartender at the Styx, a new hired-hand for the Fighting Fitzpatricks, if his rap sheet is any indication.

Freddie Gibbons of Turnersville, New Jersey: fraud, assault, burglary. Twice divorced. Named in two separate paternity suits. Won a polka contest in 1994. Hillman High School, graduating Class of 1986—which wouldn’t mean anything to Veronica (or anyone, probably), if it weren't the same school and year as Neptune’s new sheriff.

_Did Vinnie hook Freddie up with the Fitzpatricks? Vice Versa?_

_Is there admissible evidence that could link the two?_

Veronica parks outside Sunset Cliffs and is debating whether she should pick up a tail on Gibbons after his shift at the bar, whether she should call for back-up, when her phone begins to rattle in the pocket of her purse. Speak of the devil—

She reads a text from Logan as she ascends the stairs to the apartment:

 

> _Just see if I let you bring strays over after this_

Veronica frowns, then puts it together:

> _Carrie?_

A minute later,

> _She just trashed the suite_

Veronica’s key is in the lock of her front door—she can hear Back-Up yipping excitedly inside, but she hesitates:

> _Did you call the cops?_

Almost two minutes of radio silence follow, but Veronica stands and waits. Even then, all she gets is:

> _No_

Well, all right, thanks for the info, Mr. Chatty _._

> _Is it bad?_

And Logan:

> _Somewhere between that scene in Breakfast at Tiffany’s and that scene in Citizen Kane_

Veronica pulls the key from the lock and jogs back down to her car.

 

“You didn’t have to come,” says Logan, when he receives her into the suite and Veronica catches her first glimpse of the damage. “That’s not why I messaged you.”

“Then why did you message me?” She steps over a displaced lamp.

“So that you would feel guilty and responsible,” says Logan, as though it’s obvious. Veronica sticks out her tongue at him.

The room looks like the Stones just vacated it. Cushions are ripped off the couches and spread across the room; the coffee table, end tables, and their contents have been spilled over the floor, and one of the curtain rods hangs at a funny angle. By the bedroom door, there’s broken glass that Veronica thinks was once a vase, and four or five CD cases seem to have fallen victim to one of Carrie’s stilettos. The television and the stereo are intact, but, tragedy of tragedies: “The coffee machine!”

Logan turns with her to mourn the late coffee-maker. The once mighty apparatus of espresso-brewing splendor lies in pieces on the kitchen tiles. “Yeah,” he agrees. Poetic to the last, he adds: “That kinda blows. At least she didn’t throw the TV off the balcony.”

“Where is she?” Veronica asks, and Logan nods toward Dick’s bedroom.

“Sleeping it off.”

“ _Logan_.”

“What?”

“You should have called the cops.”

“And have it turn up in the tabloids?”

“Hotel security, then.”

Logan frowns, rolling over a slab of splintered plastic with the toe of his shoe. “I didn’t want her to get in trouble.”

Again:  _“Logan_.”

“Something was wrong with her, Veronica, she was—just  _gone_...”

“I can see that.”

“But she was sobbing, too. She kept saying she was going to die, and...” Logan breaks off, shaking his head. Veronica sighs.

“Why don’t you tell me what happened?” she suggests and begins collecting couch cushions.

“I wasn’t here for most of this,” Logan starts to assist her, “I went to pick up some Clippers tickets this kid from Civics had for me. When I left, she was at dinner with a friend...”

“Do you know what friend?” Veronica picks up the lamp. Logan rights an end table to give the light-fixture a place to live.

“I didn’t ask. I said she could crash here for a couple days, until Dick gets back at least, but I was out most of today anyway.”

“Well, she certainly _crashed_ ,” observes Veronica. “Doesn’t she have somewhere else to _be?_ Isn’t she going back to school at some point?”

Logan shakes his head. “She dropped out—or took the semester off, she says. Anyway,” he resumes the story, “When I got back, she was going to town on the CDs, and everything was a mess already... so I went up to her, and she was just—sobbing and wailing. It was like she didn’t recognize me, y’know? Just staring right through me. So I tried to calm her down, find out what was wrong, and she just—crumbled. Got quiet, but she was still crying...” Veronica winces when Logan starts gathering pieces of glass by hand, but he manages to handle all the larger fragments without cutting himself, “...I practically had to carry her to bed, and then she just—went all _fetal position_ until she fell asleep.”

“You think she’s on something sketchy?”

“Maybe. Probably. I’ve seen _stranger_ reactions to alcohol, though.” He deposits the shards of glass in a trashcan and continues: “But we both know what’s _really_ wrong with her.”

Veronica is pretty sure he’s right about that. “Susan Knight?” Logan nods, and Veronica has some experience with dead best friends, so she understands  _to a point_. Nonetheless: “That’s no excuse for...” She gestures around the room, but Logan just keeps cleaning, picking up the shells of the CD cases and stacking them on the kitchen counter.

“I’m not in a position to judge shitty responses to tragic deaths,” he says. “We don’t all become crime fighters there, Loxley.”

It takes half an hour to get the room into something resembling order. They fill up a white garbage bag with all the major broken items—in addition to the coffee maker, the vase, and the CDs, there are two mugs, some plates, and one of the ugly wooden figurines that the hotel must consider decorative.

“No real loss there,” Logan mutters when he drops it into the garbage bag.

When things are marginally more organized, Veronica collapses onto the long couch opposite the television. She doesn’t have an excuse to stay, except that she'd rather not leave Logan alone with a person who clearly has some violent instincts.

“I _am_ sorry I brought her here,” she confesses, when Logan falls onto the next couch. He swings his feet up onto the coffee table.

“It’s not your fault.”

“Well. It’s a  _little_ my fault.” Logan smiles feebly, but the lack of retort signals how drained he actually is. “So what exactly happened to Susan Knight?” Veronica wants to know. “Did Dick tell you about it? He was on the boat when it happened, right?”

“Yeah, he was there. He’s not sure what happened, though. None of them are.” Veronica nods; that's the story she heard via various media channels, but she hasn't had a firsthand _—_ or even a decent secondhand _—_ account of the affair yet. “They were partying on a boat—Carrie’s boat, I think, and they all went to bed, and when they woke up, Susan was gone. They assume...” Logan stops, Veronica thinks because it’s obvious what “they” assume, but then she sees his attention is caught by something behind her. She turns.

Carrie stands in the doorway to Dick’s room. She wears jeans and an off-the-shoulder cream smock, more in line with the Carrie Bishop they knew in high school. Her hair hangs in a messy knot on the top of her head, and black eye make-up has dried in streaks down her face. Her shoes are missing.

“That’s not what happened,” she says. There’s a trace of a slur to her “s,” so she’s still intoxicated, naps aside.

“Be careful walking without shoes, there might still be broken glass,” says Veronica coolly, because she sympathizes with the girl— _really_ —but she could’ve hurt someone. She could’ve hurt Logan, or had the cops called on him, and Logan doesn’t need that shit.

“That’s not what happened to Susan,” Carrie repeats. She ignores Veronica’s warning and staggers over to the third couch. Logan gets up and heads to the kitchen, returning a moment later with a glass of water, which he hands to Carrie before sitting down again.

_Nice, Logan, give Courtney Love a breakable projectile._

Veronica doesn’t voice the thought, mostly because she doesn’t want to give Carrie any ideas.

“Susan didn’t fall over the side of the boat,” she murmurs, peering down into the liquid in the cup, “She—Oh, God.” Carrie draws her feet up onto the couch, tucks them beneath her body, and touches her forehead with her fingertips. She’s crying, but they’re calm, quiet tears. “It’s my fault,” she weeps, “It was all my fault, I—we should’ve—I wanted to take the boat back right away, but we weren’t—we were so fucked up, Cobb said he didn’t know how to steer the boat, so we... God.  _I killed her_.  _It was my fault._ ” She dissolves— _crumbled,_ was Logan’s word—and Veronica slowly rises off the couch, reaches over and takes the cool glass from Carrie’s hand, setting it down on the table. The  _clink_  of the contact—glass on wood—jolts Carrie. Her eyes fly open again, fixed on Veronica as she sinks back onto the couch. Then, her voice is sharp, jagged like ice when she asks: “Do you want to see?”

Veronica has no idea what that means. She doesn’t move, half afraid Carrie is going to freak out again. Only when she is distracted, reaching into her pocket for something (a cell phone) does Veronica spare herself a glance to Logan, whose gaze flickers to her at the same moment. He is as lost in all of this as she is.

Carrie flips open the cell, jams a few buttons with her thumbs, and then pitches the phone to Veronica, who nearly misses catching it.

Logan is at her side now, he brushes her shoulder as he climbs onto her couch, craning his neck to see what’s on the screen.

Veronica’s vision takes two or three seconds to adjust—to translate the grainy cell phone image. Then, she comprehends what it she is looking at and gives an involuntary gasp. Logan, low, mumbling, breathless, asks: “Carrie, what is this?”

This time, when she cries, Carrie doesn’t cover her face. She makes no attempt to wipe the tears away. They fall fast, sobs bubbling up in her throat, uncontrollable and unchecked. In the same way, she begins her story.

“Susan was depressed. For like, a year, she’d been depressed because of the—the baby. She gave up her baby, and then her parents were...” Carrie shakes her head, dismissing something, and her voice is a little clearer when she resumes: “She wasn't getting better. I was at school. I was in Boston, I couldn’t—I couldn’t be here for her, so I told her—I was trying to cheer her up, I told her the  _first_ three day weekend I had, I’d fly home and we’d have... just a fun night out.” She wipes her eyes. The tears are rubbing away some of the make-up. “So for Labor Day weekend, I came home, and I told Susan we could take Dad's boat out, party with whoever was still around. So she brought Gia Goodman—they hung out sometimes, they were both in San Diego, and then Dick, uh—Luke Haldeman, and...” She gulps, “Cobb. Stu Cobbler. Remember him?”

Veronica doesn’t, and in her periphery, she spots Logan shake his head _no_.

“He’s—he’s just this guy. Went to Neptune with us. Kind of creepy, y’know, one of those quiet kids who looks like he’s plotting to murder the homecoming queen. He’s a dealer now, though, so Gia brought him along—or he invited himself, I don’t know. Anyway, he was there. He brought—benzos and coke and, I don’t know, other stuff, and we were all—wasted. And Susan...” A fresh wave of tears, “...Susan got really sick. Really emotional, too. So I put her to bed down in the cabin. I stayed with her too... I did, for—an hour, maybe, we just talked about... about the baby, and our parents and school, and all of it. She kept saying she wanted to get up and drink more but I didn’t let her.” Like she  _needs_  them to believe it: “ _I didn’t_. I tried to take care of her. I  _tried,_ but then she was falling asleep so I—I left her. But I went back to check on her later, and she was—she was barely breathing, her face was just... completely white, and I wanted to go back to shore, but we were all so fucked up except Cobb, and he didn’t know how to drive the boat. And he said that she would sleep it off. He said  _they always sleep it off_...” Veronica feels her chest tighten, and she hears Logan’s sharp intake of breath, “... _She’ll be fine in a couple hours, just let her sleep_. So I left her. And when I went back to check on her again, she was dead.”

Veronica expected as much, so she doesn’t know why the announcement still knocks the air out of her. Her hands are clenched over her stomach, the cell phone wrapped tightly between her fingers and her palm. She’s  _angry_ and can’t quite explain why. So  _stupid. Such a stupid waste._

Carrie continues to speak, staring down at the glass of water on the table. She might’ve forgotten anyone else is in the room, and her voice is eerily calm when she says the next part: “We weighed her body down with the anchor and threw her overboard.”

“Oh my God,” Logan whispers, and Carrie’s eyes snap up to her two companions.

“What about the picture?” Veronica questions, because maybe it’s a bad idea to get Carrie too riled up, but they’ve made it this far...

“We were all sent copies of it about two weeks ago,” Carrie tells them. “From Cobb.”

“Blackmail,” realizes Veronica. Carrie nods.

"It was his idea in the first place, doing that to Susan. We didn't even notice he wasn't helping."

“So what does he want?”

“Money, I guess.” She looks down at her hands, twisting together in her lap. “Rich friends. Favors.”

“How much? Did you pay him?”

“No flat rate will do for Stu Cobbler,” chants Carrie. “He’s been asking for things, and when he does, one of us buys it. Sound systems, designer jeans, stupid shit like that. Luke just fronted the deposit on this ugly apartment in the oh-nine.” She smirks joylessly, “I got lucky, though—I’m not Cobb’s type. He likes ‘em flat-chested and flakey, so...” It’s a little choked: “Gia.”

Veronica isn’t sure if she feels or just senses Logan tense up at that proclamation, but she glances down and sees his fingers curling into a fist between them.

“What are you going to do?” Logan asks, voice raw, and Carrie blanches in response.

“ _Do_? I’m not—don’t you get it?” she rasps, focus skipping from Logan to Veronica to Logan again. She swipes at the mascara-stained tears on her cheeks, then her pale hand slides from her face to her neck, down to her chest, where her fingers splay like a claw over her lungs. “We killed her. We _killed_ Susan. This...  _that_...” She waves at the cell phone clutched in Veronica’s hand, “That’s what we  _deserve_. That’s  _justice._ ”

 

Veronica doesn’t get much sleep that night.

Long after Carrie goes back to bed, and after a half-hearted attempt at cleaning the rest of the suite, Veronica does go home, though. Her dad didn’t expect her to return at all, so he’s already in bed by the time she tiptoes into the apartment. She sent him the standard “Don’t wait up” text earlier, and he replied with something snarky about how she doesn’t have to pretend to be sleeping at Mac’s every time she goes to the drive-in with her beau. It’s funny, because he thinks she’s spent these last couple of sleep-away nights at Piz’s, having sex, but she’s actually been at Logan’s,  _not_ having sex. It’s funny that he’d probably be more annoyed if he knew the truth. It's also funny that this is probably a pretty big step for him, trust-wise. Funny  _hmm_ , not funny _ha-ha_. Anyway, that’s why she doesn’t bother to tell him.

So Veronica tugs on her pajamas and brushes her teeth and washes her face and climbs into bed, and she lies there, staring at the dark ceiling, thinking entirely in horrors...

 _—_   _went back down to check on her again—weighed her body down with the anchor—not Cobb’s type—likes ‘em flat chested and flakey... Gia—_

It’s all so—awful. Stupid, awful, sick. She’s filled with anger and inexpressible sadness, she wishes she didn’t know, had never found out. She also wishes it would all just go away: that’s more typical, as feelings go. Maybe she can empathize with Carrie on that front.

After Logan and Veronica put her to bed, like Carrie was the world’s largest, drunkest toddler, they tried to clean some more, but ended up meandering around the suite in a miserable haze, picking at the rubble. Neither of them had any idea what to do with this kind of information, this kind of confession. Veronica still doesn’t know, and when she tries to wipe her mind clean, she catches herself praying a sick little prayer that begins:

_One thing I’m grateful for—_

* * *

She’s up at seven the next morning, running on just a few hours of sleep as she brews coffee, swallows a few bites of toast, showers, and throws on jeans and a t-shirt.

She doesn’t call ahead to Logan, because she knows he’ll be expecting her. She knows he didn’t sleep much last night, knows that he’s thinking exactly what she is. There’s no point in analyzing the  _why_ or  _how_  of this knowledge, it’s just a fact.

Logan opens the suite door in response to her knock. His hair is disheveled and he’s wearing pretty much the same sweats-and-t-shirt combo from the other night, but there’s no surprise in his expression this time. He offers her a tired smile followed by a gibe-less, “’Morning, Mars,” as he steps aside to admit her.

Veronica prepares to inquire about Carrie, then cuts herself off when she sees the girl in question emerging from Dick’s bedroom.

“Perfect timing,” Logan mumbles and closes the door behind Veronica.

“Fuck,” says Carrie. Still dressed in her jeans from the night before, she stumbles into the kitchen, eyes in a squint as she gropes about for something. Not finding it, she turns back to the other two. “You making coffee, Logan?” she queries, hoarse, then seizes a glass from the counter and fills it with tap water.

“Easier said than done,” he replies, plodding toward the kitchen. Veronica follows. “I’m out a coffee machine, as of yesterday.”

Carrie pauses mid-sip. Her eyes move from Logan to Veronica, and she sets her glass down on the counter. It’s all coming back to her now: “Shit.”

“How much do you remember about last night?” Veronica asks briskly. She’s eager to get this thing started, the familiar thrills of anticipation rippling through her, down to her fingertips. Carrie’s story, Carrie’s dilemma, they make her ill, yeah, but that just intensifies her need to get involved. There’s a problem, a  _situation_ , and Veronica is itching to fix it. To impose order on this chaos.

Carrie considers the question for a long moment. Then, without meeting anyone’s eye, she moves past them to the sitting area. “Some,” is her diplomatic response. “I got a little belligerent, I guess, sorry, Logan.” She motions indicatively around the now fully tidied suite. Logan must not have slept at all. He frowns and circles back so he can face Carrie directly... _and you can’t get much more direct than Logan:_

“What about what you told us about Susan?”

Carrie fumbles, but she tries admirably to brush the question off. “I was bullshitting you guys, sorry, I’ve got a quirky sense of humor like that. It wasn’t...”

“You showed us the picture, Carrie,” interrupts Veronica.

Carrie blinks rapidly several times, and yet she keeps her chin high. “I don’t know what you think that means, but it’s just a stupid prank...”

“No it’s not,” because  _enough is enough_ already. Veronica stomps around to sit on the couch opposite Carrie. “Stu Cobbler is blackmailing you and your friends with a picture of the three of you disposing of Susan’s body after she OD’d on your dad’s boat. How am I doing?”

Carrie draws in a rough breath, but she shakes her head. The knot in her hair slips lower on her head. “I shouldn’t have told you that—especially _you_ ,” (To an already-rolling-her-eyes Veronica) “...But it’s really better if you just forget about the whole thing. It’s none of your business, and I can handle it myself.”

“Right, well,” Veronica begins, “I can’t make any guarantees, because of the... nature of the situation, but I might be able to help you with the blackmail end of...”

“ _No!"_ Carrie interjects quickly, "That’s— _no._ ”

“But you should let her help you,” Logan supplies, and he joins Veronica on the sofa. “This is what she does. She’s really good.” He looks appealingly to Veronica, who is of course grateful for the vote of confidence, though she does feel obliged to add:

“I can’t promise anything, I’ll do what I can but...”

“Jesus, I don’t want your help, Veronica Mars,” snaps Carrie, pulling her bare feet up to the couch, so her soles rest flat on the edge of the couch cushion. “That’s the  _last_ thing I want. If Gia ever finds out I told  _you_  of all people—if  _Cobb_ finds out!”

“So you’re just going to go along with this?” Veronica demands. “Pay him off again and again? Have Gia sleep with him and hope he eventually gets bored having you guys under his thumb?”

“It’s none of your business,” Carrie insists, but her voice is unsteady, like it’s everything she can do to stop herself from breaking down in tears again. “I’m sorry about the room, Logan, really, but I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

“I don’t understand why you...” Logan begins, but Carrie cuts him off.

“Well  _try!_  I don’t—I don’t fucking care about Stu Cobbler or the money or any of that shit,  _God.”_  She’s not crying, but she’s trembling—her body and her voice. “She was my  _best friend._ Susan was my best friend, and we just dumped her body like—like garbage.  _What if she wasn't even_...?" That thought proves too much, she doesn't finish asking the question. "It just—it won’t leave me. It’s all I can think about, all the time. Imagine the worst thing that’s happened to you—the darkest, most terrible part of your life, and then—then it’s  _your fault_. A stupid fucking mistake and there’s nothing you can to do take it back or make it better. She’s  _dead,_ Susan is  _dead_ because of me—” now there are tears, “And I have to live with what  _I_ did, so don’t tell me that you can fix this, because you  _can’t! Nothing_ can fix this, don’t you get that?”

Veronica happens to glance at Logan just then, and the look on his face sends a sharp pain shooting through her body. He stares at Carrie, lines running deep in his forehead, lips parted. Not stunned, but  _knowing,_  as though she’s repeating old, familiar words back to him. He’s aching with sympathy too, choked up with it—that’s right there in his eyes. Veronica can read almost anything in his eyes, and now it’s all ache and understanding and grief screaming from some long silent depths. It’s easier to look away.

“Carrie,” she begins to whisper, but Carrie interrupts.

“I don’t need your help, Veronica,” she says.

But then Veronica looks her over—takes in this girl before her—knees to her chest, arms folded resolutely. The bloodshot eyes, the clammy, sallow skin, marred by black stains beneath her lashes, and—worst of all—the familiar creak to her voice, the crack in her desperate, fake bravado as she tries so hard to be tough.

Veronica can’t remember the last time someone needed her help more.

“Just leave it alone.” Carrie straightens up, and Logan lets out a breath that he must have been holding for ages. He turns a disoriented gaze to Veronica that hits her with the powerful, barely resisted, impulse to hold his hand. Carrie hauls her body up from the couch, shuffles a few steps, and then hesitates, like there’s something she wants to add before she thinks better of it. She stops again at the door to Dick’s room.

“Look, if you want me to leave...” she begins to say to Logan, but he shakes his downcast head.

“Dick’s gone till Monday anyway.”

Carrie bobs her chin once in response, then slips mutely into the bedroom.

_Well, that’s that._

Perhaps Carrie’s refusal is for the best—how would Veronica even begin to approach such a case? Well, mutually assured destruction, for one, she shouldn’t have too much trouble digging up dirt on a drug dealer, or maybe... _dammit, that’s a rhetorical question, Brain. You’re not actually working on this._

Logan’s voice interrupts her train of thought: “C’mon, I’ll buy you breakfast.” He must read the doubt on her face, because he adds: “You can have my bacon.”

“Fine.”

They eat at Marlee’s—Veronica’s choice for the pancakes, beyond healthy portioning, and greasy spoon atmosphere that seems well-suited to this morning’s emotional hangover. She swipes two of Logan’s bacon strips in addition to the four allotted her, but he must’ve been sincere in his offer, because he poses no objection. He pokes at his eggs and manages to get down half a waffle, but mostly he just sips his coffee and stares at the Formica tabletop. 

“So what are you going to do?” Veronica eventually feels compelled to ask. Logan’s eyes flicker up to her face; he shakes his head, uncomprehending. “About Carrie.” Another blank stare: “Logan, she trashed your room. She can’t  _stay_ there.”

Logan shrugs. “It wasn’t that bad.”

“Logan.”

“She didn’t hurt anyone...”

“She  _could’ve_.”

“She’s not thinking straight right now...”

“Oh, that’s very true,” Veronica agrees, and Logan sighs.

He moves his eggs around with the end of his fork. “But you’re going to help her, right?”

Veronica avoids the question. She swallows a gulp of her own cooling coffee and hopes somehow Logan won’t read into her silence. It’s a vain hope, of course. “What?” he presses her. He leans over the diner table, pushing the mostly full plate out of his way. “You  _wanted_  to help her, right? You can?”

_God, this boy sometimes..._

“Logan, she doesn’t want my help,” Veronica protests. She nudges her far emptier plate toward the middle of the table as well. “She was  _very_ explicit about that.”

“Yeah, but—there’s got to be  _something_  you can do...”

“Carrie needs professional help. Therapy. Rehab, maybe...”

“And for that creep to stop blackmailing her! And...” he lowers his voice, “The part about Gia Goodman?  _Veronica.”_

“Yeah, I know, Logan,” Veronica gets a little impatient, “but Carrie hasn’t hired me.”

“But...”

“Okay,” She folds her arms and sits back against the vinyl seat of their booth, “Do you remember Carmen Ruiz from high school?”

“Uh—yeah?”

“You might also remember a video of her that circulated for a while junior year? It involved a popsicle?”

Logan flushes red, mirrors her position on the opposite side of the table. “I remember.”

“Okay, well that...”

“Shelly Pomroy’s party, I know, but, Veronica,” he flattens his palms over the table and is so earnest, “it’s not like I’m still bringing GHB to parties, I wouldn’t...”

“What? That’s not—no, Logan, I’m not—I’m not talking about that.” It’s infernal, her relationship with Logan... how sometimes they can be completely in-sync with one another and sometimes it’s like they’re navigating an impregnable language barrier. “I’m saying: Carmen Ruiz was the last person to hire me to get rid of a compromising digital file, and  _obviously_ that didn’t work out so well. It’s practically impossible. There’s no way of knowing where or how someone has backed the image up.”

“And I’m sure you’ve learned from your mistakes and would do it differently this time,” Logan chirps, an artificially broad, cheesy smile lighting up his features.

_Well, if nothing else, Carrie Bishop is much more likely to press the kill button than Carmen Ruiz was. Which doesn’t solve the problem of..._

“Sure, maybe,  _if_ Carrie had hired me. But  _no one_ has hired me! She doesn’t want my help!”

Logan frowns, tapping his index finger against the top of the table as he considers this setback. “All right,” he agrees eventually, “that’s fair, your time is valuable,  _I’ll_  hire you.”

“Logan...”

“What? Why can’t I hire you?”

“Because it’s not your case!”

“It would be if I hired you.”

“You can’t hire me to solve someone else’s problem.”

“Why not?”

“Because—well, for one thing, in this kind of situation, you need client cooperation...”

“And I would cooperate!”

“But you wouldn’t be the client!”

“But I would be.” He breaks it down, like he’s explaining the principle to a small child: “If. I. Hired. You.”

Veronica groans and threads her fingers through her hair, pushing it away from her face.  _Lord, give me strength._  “You are the most...” she begins, but then makes eye contact with their waitress, fixes her posture to something more conventionally sociable, and detours (polite as she can muster): “Excuse me, can we get the check when you have a minute? Thank you...” When she’s gone, it’s back to Logan: “You’re being deliberately dense.”

“Okay fine, but, Veronica, imagine it was me, and...”

“Logan, if it were you, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I would help you in a heartbeat, of course, but it’s  _not you_. It’s Carrie, and I can’t help someone who doesn’t want me to help them.”  _And neither can you_  sits right there on the tip of her tongue, a plea not to get too caught up in this—too invested. It’ll only break his heart.

His lower lip drops, he sucks in a breath, filling his lungs for an argument, but then something stops him. He deflates, slumping over the table with his head propped up in the palm of his hand. He grabs a fork and takes a doleful bite of egg.

“You’re probably right.”                                    

Of course she’s right, but this doesn’t feel like a victory. It feels shitty.

“Look, if she changes her mind, she can call me.”

“Yeah,” he grunts. His fork clatters onto the plate, and he reaches for his wallet—withdrawing it, then a credit card, just as the waitress returns with the check.

“I can...”

“I said I’d buy you breakfast,” he reminds her, and she lets it drop. They sit in silence while awaiting the return of the waitress, and Veronica wishes she could think of something to say. Logan looks so defeated, staring at his half-eaten plate of waffles, but she’s not  _wrong_ about this: Carrie told them not to get involved, didn’t she? It’s not as though they can force her to hire Veronica.

But that damn look in his eyes when he was listening to Carrie talk about her guilt. She has a masochistic urge to ask him about it. If she were the type of person who could say comforting things, maybe she would. Anyway, he’d only misinterpret the gesture—think she was interrogating him—and that’s worse. Instead, she changes tactic.

“Dick didn’t drop any hints about this?” Logan lifts an eyebrow, the only indication that he's heard her. “Do you think he’s being blackmailed too?”

“Dick?” Logan frowns. “Dick doesn’t know anything about this.”

“How do you know?” Carrie didn’t mention Dick at all, except to say that he was on the boat, but she didn’t overtly exclude him either. There’s no reason to assume he somehow remained oblivious to the disaster surrounding him.

“He wasn’t in the picture,” Logan points out. “And he would’ve told me about it.”

“But how do you...?”

“He would’ve told me,” Logan repeats with full conviction. Veronica doesn’t know if she can support that kind of trust in Dick Casablancas or if it’s another instance of Logan’s faith in all the wrong people. She surprises herself though, because she hopes that Logan is right. Not for Dick's sake.

After the waitress returns his card and receipt, they don’t say much. Logan drives them back to the Grand so Veronica can pick up her car, but the trip is quiet and slightly tense. She makes a frail inquiry about Logan’s Thanksgiving, which he describes as “routine,” before turning the question back to her.

“The same,” she agrees. “The parade was a little weak this year.”

“I don’t know—there was a  _Xanadu_ number, so I was satisfied.”

That eases some of the tension just as they pull into the hotel garage. The discussion of Thanksgiving reminds her of Logan’s conversation with Piz— _Apology 2.0_ —but she doesn’t bring it up. The exchange annoyed her initially, Veronica’s knee-jerk reaction being to suspect a degree of irony in Logan’s actions, even if Piz didn’t.

She has since reconsidered this position. Maybe Logan wasn’t up to anything. Maybe he was just _trying_. Maybe her own instinctive belief in underhanded motives was rooted in—in surprise. That he’d moved beyond his jealousy. Moved on like that. It's... a surprise.

A good thing, of course. The right thing. Maturity, growth, all that. Just _—_ surprising _._

Veronica swallows thickly and gets out of the car. Before they part ways, she walks over to the driver’s side of the Range Rover and _—_ arms folded over her belly _—_ gives a final entreaty: “Be careful, okay? With this Carrie thing—it sucks, but she’s not... stable.”

“Yeah, all right,” says Logan, not quite as committal as Veronica would like. He doesn’t add anything else, but she feels faint stirrings of guilt nonetheless.  _Him and his damn sad eyes._

“I can’t help her if she doesn’t want me to, Logan,” she says again, even though he hasn’t mentioned it since the diner. “I don’t make a habit of poking around for people who want to be left alone.” Logan smirks, and he opens his mouth like he’s going to contest the veracity of  _that_ claim. So, fine, point taken, but Veronica cuts him off anyway: “Not a  _word_ , Echolls.”

 

Ultimately, Veronica spends most of Saturday distracting herself. Homework, a little filing-and-phones for Dad, and errands that she’s been putting off: she changes the oil in the Saturn, makes progress on a giant stack of laundry, and cleans take-out containers from the backseat of her dad’s car. These are mild successes as far as distraction techniques go, but by Saturday evening, she’s all out of busy work.

She takes dinner to her dad again and, returned home, stretches out on her bed with a few of Mars Investigations’ less interesting case files—the only investigative work she’s officially doing for her dad these days. Background checks for small businesses and a tail on a probably-not-even-cheating spouse. Boring, but easy-peasy, and it’ll clear up her dad’s crowded plate.

It’s mostly computer work now, with a glorified credit check on one thoroughly dry Tim Dooley underway, and as Veronica stares at the slow-loading browser, her mind wanders:

So she can’t help Carrie. That’s just a fact. But if she could—

She makes a mental (easily denied, if anyone were to ask) list of questions that would require answers:

_How were the pictures sent? Text? E-mail? Would there be back-up on the carriers' servers?_

_Would Stu Cobbler have access to that?_

_Why had he waited almost two months to start blackmailing the others? Was he waiting for the media to calm down or setting up a foolproof blackmail scheme?_

It’s not her case, of course, but just to quell the curiosity, Veronica opens a new browser window and punches in some buzzwords for the question about text and e-mail storage. The answering articles on the subject range from impassioned (rants about Big Brother’s insidious gaze) to informative (tech-speak laden blog posts).

 _Ask Mac_ , is Veronica’s reflexive solution, but of course, she’d only do that if this were a case. A real one.

Her cell phone on the night stand chimes just as Veronica switches back to the background check on the world’s least exciting executive assistant applicant. She grabs the cell and finds an unfamiliar set of digits lighting up the small call-screen. Local area code, though, which piques Veronica’s interest.

She flips the phone open. “Hello?”

“Hey—uh, Veronica?” Male voice: tentative, familiar, he introduces himself, “It’s Luke Haldeman. From—high school.”

 _And of recent Rich Kid in Distress Weekly fame._ Veronica sits bolt upright, her heart suddenly pounding, she’s uncertain why.  _Here it is,_ she thinks. “Hi, Luke. What’s up?”

Luke exhales, shaky and nervous: “Um—well, I was told you might be able to help me with a... delicate situation…”

“You were told,” Veronica echoes, surprised. “Carrie talked to you?”

“Uh, no. Not Carrie." Luke clears his throat. "Logan Echolls, actually.”

_Of course._

Veronica thinks she should probably be annoyed at the interference, but she’s not, not at all. She can  _feel_ the adrenaline coursing through her veins as she makes her decision.

She says: “I see. And what can I do for you, Luke-Haldeman-From-High-School?”

"Well, I was thinking I could... you know.... hire you?"

“Well,” the faintest of smirks tugs at the ends of her lips, because it looks like she has a case after all: “you could certainly try.”


	3. The Crew

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “ 'Bribe' is such a... feeble word. I prefer ‘blackmail.’”
> 
> Luke sputters: “Blackm—Veronica, if Cobb doesn’t land me in prison, you’re going to.”

“ _Care_ ,” breathes Susan, so soft that Carrie nearly misses the light, musical syllable of her nickname over the wind and waves and laughter drifting in through the cabin window. “Remember at St. Mary’s, when we’d sneak out of Morning Prayer and go behind the L-building?”

Susan is curled up on the settee berth, Carrie perched beside her, stroking the dark blond hair that frames her face. “I remember,” says Carrie, and she knows a little weariness seeps into her voice as she says it, but Susan won’t notice; Susan is gone. “You’d tell me everything I missed in Miss Hannon’s homeroom, and I’d tell you everything from Sister Grace’s homeroom.”

“We couldn’t go half an hour without talking to each other back then,” Susan reflects, and Carrie stifles a sigh. She’s ready to go upstairs, to rejoin the party now that Susan’s ruminations have become repetitive, but this _is_ Susan’s night, she can’t just _leave_...

“That was eighth grade, Suze. We still talk every day.”

“I wish we hadn’t left,” Susan hums.

“Eighth grade?”

“Saint Mary’s.”

“You hated Saint Mary’s,” Carrie points out, and it’s true. Susan transferred first, and it was only the Knights’ decision that public school was good enough for their little angel that convinced the Bishops to bring Carrie along to Neptune High the next year. “Remember Mr. Pressley and his _obsession_ with the dress code? God, what a creep.”

Susan isn’t listening: “Do you think he ever thinks about our baby?”

She’s not talking about Mr. Pressley.

“I don’t know, Suze, what does it matter?” _I’m going to need at least another beer if she wants to go through all this again_...

Susan begins to cry again and buries her face in the cushion beneath her. “I’m so sorry, Care, I know, I’m being such a drag... I just can’t help it. They’re always in the back of my mind... what if I’d just...?”

Carrie hushes her gently, continues her soothing strokes through Susan’s hair, and breathes reassurances. “It’s okay, honey, I know. It’ll all be okay.”

“No, it won’t, it can’t ever be, it’s too much...” Susan weeps into the bed, shaking her head against Carrie’s promises. They sit like that for a while, so Carrie is almost dozing before Susan speaks again: “I’m sorry, Care,” she whispers again, the tears dried up from her voice. “It’s supposed to be a good night, I’m too fucked-up. The booze an’ the downers. Better in the morning.”

“Mhm.”

“I’ll just—I’ll just sleep for a little while.”

“Mhm.”

“It’ll all be better in the morning.”

“It will, Suze. Don’t worry anymore.” She waits for Susan to drift to sleep, and then, carefully so as not to wake her, she climbs off the settee and heads for the door, stumbling a bit on her feet. She’s not sure if it’s the boat rocking or her. Just as she reaches the ascending stairs, Susan’s voice beckons to her:

“ _Care?”_

Carrie turns to look at Susan over her shoulder, sympathetic smile firmly in place—

Susan is sitting up now, fully alert; her make-up isn’t smudged, her hair looks well-combed, and she sits with her arms folded over her stomach, her legs crossed at the knee. One neatly-penciled eyebrow curves upward, and she asks archly: “ _Do you even remember checking my pulse?_ ”

Carrie’s eyes fly open. Her heart slams against her chest and she’s sweating as she gasps for breath, sits up in a bed that is not her own, a dead girl’s name beating through her brain in frantic, furious rhythm.

The gold and green décor of the room comes into clearer focus as Carrie puts definition to the general familiarity of her surroundings: _The Neptune Grand. Logan Echolls’ suite._ This is the fifth night she’s spent here, possibly her last, since surely Dick will return to claim his room soon, and she doesn’t imagine that Logan will be particularly receptive to her crashing on his couch for the foreseeable future. Carrie sweeps the room once, eyes skimming over her overflowing tote bag by the dresser, her cosmetic clutch on the desk, three pairs of shoes behind the door. She’s got that last-day-of-vacation feeling, a strange detachment from this space she has lived in for less than a week, as she suddenly remembers it doesn’t belong to her at all, never did, and soon maids will come in and erase her: wash the sheets, destroy the evidence, someone else will come to stay.

She kicks off the blankets and climbs out of bed. At least she managed pajamas last night—sweats that are her own and the hoodie she borrowed-with-intent-to-steal from Logan. He lent her this jacket, bought her breakfast, drove her around until she remembered where she parked the car, let her stay here while Gia was off being _domestic_ , and how did she repay him? She trashed his suite and fell apart on his couch.

 _God, you’re a bitch_ , she thinks as she slouches out into the main room.

Logan’s awake, on the couch with a mug of coffee and the TV on. When Carrie enters, he shifts away from Charles Osgood’s scintillating coverage of what looks like a three-hundred-year-old Alaskan fisherman and gestures at a silver room service trolley. The assortment piled there is certainly tempting: a variety of Danishes, muffins, weirdly shaped pastries of uncertain origin, a short stack of toast, a butter dish, three bowls of jams—each a different, vibrant jewel tone—chinaware for cream and sugar, and—her belly gives a guilty squirm—a carafe of coffee.

“’Morning,” greets Logan, but he doesn’t really meet her eye, just refocuses on the television.

She probably deserves that.

“’Morning,” she replies. She picks up a plate, selects a cherry Danish and a banana walnut muffin, and joins Logan on the couch. “You expecting company?” she asks, and Logan lifts a questioning eyebrow. “There’s enough food to feed a pregnant army.”

 “There’s always lunch,” he says with a shrug, and then it’s back to Osgood and the Alaskan fisherman. Carrie settles in.

It’s been a tense twenty-four hours, redeemed only by the fact that Carrie successfully avoided Logan for most of that time. When he was off doing God-knows-what with Veronica Mars yesterday morning, Carrie took the opportunity to sneak out herself... only to find that she had nowhere she particularly wanted to go and no one she wanted to see. Nobody was _around_ for one thing. She eventually decided that Shelly Pomroy beat out Madison Sinclair—just barely—for least undesirable company in the area, and she sent Shelly a text to meet up for brunch. Stupid idea, of course, since she ended up wasting forty dollars on mimosas, a spinach-mushroom omelet, and vapid conversation.

Yesterday afternoon, she sequestered herself to the bedroom while Logan nearly drove her insane with nervous energy, pacing around the living room and kitchen like he was trying to wear a hole in the floor. By evening, he peeked his head in and asked if she wanted Mexican food for dinner, and they reached a kind of detente. He didn’t press her with questions about Susan, didn’t bring up Veronica Mars again, and didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow when she ordered a Corona with her meal, so—that was something.

She takes a large bite of Danish and, chewing on the deliciously flakey crust, asks: “When does Dick get back again?”

Logan sips his coffee. “Tomorrow.”

“He doesn’t have school?”

“Dick never takes Friday or Monday classes, so he has a four day weekend every week.”

“And people think Dick is stupid,” notes Carrie.

“He’ll be thirty by the time he graduates.”

Carrie chews the truly masterful pastry for a few seconds, before daring the question foremost on her mind: “Does that mean I get his room for tonight?”

“Sure, if you promise not to trash it.”

She debates whether this is a judicious move, then decides she doesn't really care and tosses the banana nut muffin at Logan’s head, scowling at him as she does.

“What is wrong with you?” Logan grouses. He picks up the projectile pastry from where it falls on the couch cushion and drops it back on the room service trolley. Carrie takes another bite of her Danish while Logan searches out the crumbs.

“Good thing there’s like thirty more where that came from,” Carrie observes, nodding at the bountiful tray beside him.

“And just see if _you_ get any of them.”

Carrie likes Logan a lot more than she thought she would... certainly more than she did in high school.

It’s not that she _hated_ him in high school—she just didn’t get the appeal. Another entitled, over-manicured rich boy with a douche-y car... interchangeable with any of the other 09er guys, except a degree smarter and reasonably more hygienic, which Carrie had always figured meant _closet case_ anyway.

And then there was the whole Veronica Mars thing. One minute Logan was denouncing Veronica as the spawn of Satan—the trailer trash gold-digger who betrayed Lilly Kane’s memory before her best friend was cold in the ground—and the next minute he was squaring off in Veronica’s defense against all his supposed friends at that truly _surreal_ un-Birthday-Bash. He started throwing guys into lockers if they talked smack about her... that summer they dated, Logan pretty much had Garrett Fisher blackballed from every decent party, because Garrett made some less-than-original _Veronica’s a slut_ joke. People kept in line after that—the mood was tense and the whispers stayed on the down-low when Veronica dropped Logan and ascended the rungs of Neptune High Social Royalty to become Duncan Kane’s arm candy. Even then, it was _Logan_ whose wrath people avoided.

And it’s not that Carrie objected to guys throwing each other into lockers, because that kind of thing brightened the dull days of high school. It’s just that the inconsistency always bugged her. As someone who, at the time, made it her business to know the business of all her classmates, she got whiplash just trying to keep up.

But that’s not her anymore, so maybe she should expect that Logan Echolls has grown up a little, too.

The college thing is weird, for one. Didn’t see that one coming. The Veronica Mars thing continues to boggle the mind, and honestly, Carrie has _no_ idea why he’s letting her stay here. No complaints, of course, because it’s actually much better than putting up with Gia, and no way in hell is she going back to her parents’ house. Still, she expected a “payment in kind” joke when they arranged for her to stay in Dick’s room, and yet—nothing.

Thanksgiving—which consisted of the parade, turkey subs, and then six hours of an _I Dream of Jeanie_ marathon on TV Land—was surprisingly enjoyable, even though Carrie’s had that stupid theme song stuck in her head for the last three days.

It is a _little_ surprising that they haven’t hooked up, though.

Because: she’s a hot girl, he’s an attractive guy (not her usual type, but _still_ ), they’re both single and in _college_ during a lonely holiday season, and c’mon, has she really stayed _five_ days in _Logan Goddamn Echolls’ hotel suite_ without even getting hit on a little? It would be insulting, except she’s one hundred percent sure that Logan is so hung up on his ex that the birds have started to pick at his eyes.

Which is sad for Logan but convenient for Carrie, since it means a rent free room with no suspicious strings attached. It’s really for the best... though she wouldn’t say _no_ to a casual, stress relieving fuck. Because he’s actually pretty good-looking, in a surprising way that she can’t seem to _unsee_. He has really interesting hands, too, and if the things she’s heard are true... well, it would be worth the time.

Ex-directed-looks-of-longing aside, though, it’s possible Carrie has missed the proverbial boat with Logan anyway. Now that he knows about—Susan and everything that happened on the boat, he probably thinks she’s crazy. Crazy and awful. As if the booze-fueled tantrums didn’t prove that much, the addition of _I Know What You Did Last Labor Day_ to the equation makes her look like a full-on Duncan Kane level kook. Maybe _that’s_ why he hasn’t kicked her out yet—he’s afraid she’ll go ballistic on him.

Maybe she would, just for the fun of it.

 _You’re such a bitch_ , she chides herself, not quite seriously _._

Logan finishes the remains of his breakfast in silence, the hum of the television smoothing out any potential awkwardness, but there’s a tension in his posture, Carrie notices, as he drains his coffee cup and sets aside his empty plate. When he lets out a heavy breath and shifts his body towards her, begins to speak, Carrie learns why:

“Listen, there’s something you should know. Luke Haldeman...”

Carrie groans, already guessing where this is headed: “Shit’s sake, Logan, just let it _go_...”

He carries on in spite of this: “Luke hired Veronica to work on your case.”

“He _what_?”

“Last night, he hired her to...”

Carrie hops up from the couch, and now she really _would_ like to start throwing things again. “You told Luke that I told you about Susan?”

“No, I just...”

“I told you— _I_ _told you to stay out of it!_ ” She’s hurling towards her bedroom a second later, but then spins round and stalks back to the now-standing Logan, because she’s not done yelling at him, _not nearly_ : “What possessed you to do something stupid like that? When they find out I...” _Fuck shit shit shit,_ “When they find out _I_ told... Logan, I swore to Gia, don’t you...?”

“I didn’t tell Luke that you told us,” Logan interrupts heatedly, “I said that I had your phone, and I was looking for a contact, and I stumbled on the picture myself, see?”

“He couldn’t have believed that!”

Logan frowns. “How well do you know Luke?”

—Which would be funny, except that it’s really not. Veronica Mars has certainly rubbed off on this meddling idiot and now... _God, what is she going to do?_

They were supposed to take care of each other. She was supposed to take care of the others—failed Susan, now failing Luke and Gia... Gia, _God,_ when Gia finds out...

Logan shifts his weight, palms on his hips as he stands: a little awkwardly, waiting for a battle maybe, but also willing to meet in armistice should she allow it. Carrie closes her eyes, lets darkness swallow up the room _... it’s a nightmare, not real, not real, not real..._

When she opens her eyes again, she speaks in a level, cool tone, calculated to cut deep. It’s a trick she picked up from her mom, who could so elegantly blend accusation, fury, and heartsick grief into a lovely little cocktail that would give an angel guilt. “Luke’s father is in _Congress_ , Logan. This isn’t some experiment for your girlfriend, this is our _lives._ Gia’s spent the last year trying to—to survive everything she’s been through with her dad. If this gets out, she’s not going to survive another scandal. Do you have any idea what that’s like?”

She realizes her tactical error almost at once, as Logan’s expression shifts: from slow-growing uncertainty to a thoroughly sardonic twist of the lips and bob of the eyebrows in response to her last question. _Does he know what it’s like? Of course he does._ Logan tips his head to one side as he asks, “That’s a... joke, right?”

Carrie rolls her eyes, somehow both too drained and too keyed up to continue explaining to Logan Echolls what a moron he is.

“You’re an ass, did you know that?” she says instead, then turns on her heel to flee the room—slowly enough that she’ll hear any insult he throws back at her, but... nothing. Just silence, then the crack of the bedroom door as she slams it behind her.

 

 

Amid the steady buzz of Sunday morning customers seeking the caffeine—or at least the free Wi-Fi—of the Singer Park Starbucks, Veronica types out the finishing touches on her report for the executive assistant background check on Tim “Dull as Dishwater” Dooley that she’s running for Mars Investigations. This isn’t her usual coffee shop hang out, but Veronica has her reasons for selecting a crowded chain in North County over Java the Hut or the Hearst Student Union. She’s not in costume, _per se_ , she gave her real name to the barista and all, but there’s a level of anonymity to this location that’s strong enough to be effective and subtle enough that the cloak-and-dagger-ism won’t be apparent should she be detected. And that’s a fine balance to strike.

Luke Haldeman, dropping unannounced into the chair across from her, evidently disagrees:

“Starbucks?” he asks, then folds his arms over the round café table between them. “Shouldn’t we be meeting somewhere a little more—I don’t know, _private_?”

“We’re not staying,” Veronica replies, saves her document, then closes the laptop and slips it into her bag, “I’m just waiting for my latte. And also: _hello, Happy Thanksgiving, nice to see you_ to you too.”

Luke sighs. “Hello, Veronica,” he says like it’s killing him, and Veronica’s answering simper contains the same measure of sincerity.

He’s never been her _least_ favorite 09er—a statistic that says very little about either of them—but Luke seems to have grown into his USC-attending, son-of-a-Congressman persona with more than a little enthusiasm. And, okay, Veronica could forgive the slim cut khakis, the brown leather loafers, and the pin-striped Tommy Hilfiger button-up easily enough, because that’s practically the Trojans’ _uniform,_ right? It’s really the tortoise-shell Ray Bans he continues to wear _in doors_ that begin to try her nerves. The chocolate-colored velour fedora tipped low over his brow is (she assumes) for disguise.

“Hello, Luke,” she replies, just as the barista calls her name and she goes to collect her drink.

They walk around the courtyard plaza at Singer Park, a bustling tourist trap for vacationers over the age of thirty. Locals might spare a Sunday morning for brunch at Gregoire’s, or if they’ve really got a hankering to pick up some artisanal, locally-blown glass, but the likelihood of running into any of their contemporaries in the crowded plaza is slim, with a believable _we-ran-into-each-other-at-the-organic-smoothie-stand_ excuse.

Luke has some remaining doubts about the security of this meeting site, though, as he doggedly scans the faces in the crowd around them. “And this is more private than Starbucks _how?"_

Veronica rolls her eyes. “You meet somewhere quiet and secluded _,_ anybody that happens by can overhear you. A place like this—not _too_ jam-packed, but sufficiently busy so that no one catches more than five words—is actually ideal. Believe me, I wanted to rendezvous on the bench in front of the Cezanne exhibit at the Galleria, but it’s twenty-two-bucks a pop on weekends, and that was a little steep, even for me, just to set up a scene.”

Luke fidgets anxiously, bobbling his head along with what she says while cracking his knuckles, and Veronica takes pity on him.

“Look, we’re fine. Why don’t we grab a bench and you can tell me about your problem?”

When they’ve found a seat on a cast-iron park bench near the playground, Luke relaxes a little and begins: “So from what Logan said, I gather you know about—the picture?”

She’s talked to Logan by this point, called him right after she set up this appointment with Luke. Her version of the story is straight enough, but there’s no harm in getting another perspective, so Veronica replies to his question with one of her own: “What exactly did Logan tell you?”

“That he found it on Carrie’s phone, told you about it, and you could help.” Luke leans closer. “So you—you’ve seen it.”

“Yes.”

He exhales into his chest. “She was already...” Voice in a whisper, “...dead... when we...”

“I know.”

“We were wasted...”

“Know that too.”

“My life is over if this gets out.”

That’s where he loses Veronica: “‘Over’ because your Dad yanks your trust fund and you have to get a job like the rest of us?”

“‘Over’ because I get kicked out of school, probably go to jail, and yeah—I lose my inheritance, I get disowned, my Dad loses the next election, and the whole family’s screwed over.” He stares out at the playground across the way, twisting the Rolex on his wrist over while he waits for Veronica’s response.

“Okay, well, bad news first,” says Veronica, after a sip from her latte, “We can’t get rid of the picture.”

Luke falls back on the bench, throwing his hands up in exasperation: “Then why the hell am I hiring you?”

“ _We can’t get rid of the picture_ ,” Veronica presses on, “Because there’s no way to be completely sure it’s destroyed. What we _can_ do is come up with incentive for Stu Cobbler never to _use_ the picture.”

“That’s what we’re _already_ doing,” Luke points out, “I’m buying his silence with Swiss sound systems, Veronica, I don’t need you to tell me how to bribe...”

“'Bribe’ is such a... _feeble_ word. I prefer ‘blackmail.’”

Luke sputters: “Blackm—Veronica, if Cobb doesn’t land me in prison, _you’re_ going to.”

“Cost of doing business, Compadre,” she responds, very serious. Off Luke’s obvious terror, she clarifies: “Relax, it’s a joke. Sort of. The prison part. Blackmail is still very much on the table.”

Luke removes his fedora, pinching circles around the brim: “You’re killing me here.”

_All right, first the basics._

“Tell me about the picture,” she says. “How’d you get it? How did Cobb send it to you?”

“E-mail,” says Luke. “We all got it.”

“Carrie had it on her phone. In a text.”

“I don’t know anything about that. I know she got the e-mail like Gia and me, though. We talked about it.”

“Have you talked to Cobb about it? Face-to-face conversation? Phone calls? Texts? E-mails?”

“Well, the first e-mail.” Luke is skittish again, eyes darting all over the place, but Veronica doesn’t think he’s lying now, just nervous. “He kind of... laid it all out there. Sort of. I don’t... it was like he was trying to blackmail us without actually blackmailing us...”

“I’ll need to read it.”

“I deleted it. Carrie or Gia might have theirs? They could forward...”

“Better not, I’ll look into it myself.” _Call Mac_ — _no... it’s not Mac’s problem_ or _Mac’s case_... “Besides that, are there any recorded conversations directly referring to what happened to Susan? Even if they’re deleted?”

“No.”

“I’ll need your e-mail password.”

“I probably shouldn’t...” He stops at the look Veronica shoots him—and it’s nice, because it saves her the trouble of telling him he’s being an idiot. “Fine.”

“Text messages?”

“Huh?”

“Have you sent any text messages about it?”

“I don’t think so...”

“Be sure. Here...” She reaches into her bag and pulls out a spiral bound notebook, from which she tears a page that she hands over to Luke. “Make a list. Check your e-mails, your text messages... your, I don’t know, MySpace, or whatever you’re using these days. Anything that has any acknowledgment of what happened to Susan, the fact that you lied about it, the picture, the blackmail, or your bribes. Write it down on that piece of paper, don’t type anything, don’t save anything digitally, _don’t_ forward anything, and don’t delete anything that already exists. Got it?”

Luke nods, then waves the paper. “Why does it have to be on this page?”

 _Sheesh._ “I’m illustrating a point. One, single hard copy that you make today, give to me, and show to _no one else_ , got it?”

“Sure, got it. I’m not a toddler, I understand the basic idea of...”

“Luke.”

“Fine, okay, got it.”

She asks him a few more questions—if there’s anyone else who knows what really went down on the boat (his father’s lawyer has some idea; Veronica gets the name), the form of Cobb’s “requests” (by phone or in person, always with an air of civility, friendship, as though Luke’s just doing him a _favor_ ), the nature of these requests (mostly luxury items—sound systems, a watch—with the occasional “Get my name on the list at such-and-such club,” thrown in for good measure).

And then there’s the man himself, Stu Cobbler:

“So he's a dealer, right” Veronica asks, scanning the tableau of tourists in the plaza before her. She’s not really concerned about running into anyone she knows, but that’s no reason to let her guard down. “What kind of drugs does he move?”

“I don’t know,” Luke mumbles. “I don’t even really _use_.”

Veronica snorts. “And yet you’re two for two in drug-related cases brought to me, Haldeman.”

“I used _that_ night, yeah!” comes the quick defense, “But like, usually—nah, I’m good. I wanted to try coke, I’d never done it, y’know? It was like a rite of passage thing. But I don’t even do real drugs. They test for the baseball team.”

“So you don’t have _any_ idea what kind of stuff Cobb is dealing?”

_Useless._

“That night? He had coke and he had pills. Valium or... Vicodin, maybe? I dunno, I only tried the coke. What does it matter?”

“Cobb gave Susan the drugs that killed her. Legally, if the truth gets out, there’s a good chance that he’s the one who’ll be held responsible.”

“But who’s going to give a damn about the truth when they see...” Luke lowers his voice, tilts his head downward, “the picture?”

He’s right, but there’s no point in dwelling on the matter: “Let me worry about that.”

“That’s what I’m saying! You get rid of the picture and...”

“I _can’t_ get rid of the picture!”

Luke frowns. “I can’t get Gia on board with this if you can’t get rid of the picture.”

“We need Gia on board with this,” Veronica presses, “We need all of you on board with this, but we especially need Gia. She’s got the most access.”

“Is Carrie on board?” Luke wants to know; he’s still fiddling with the hat. “Like—she knows Logan called me, right? She doesn’t think _I’m_ the one who...?”

“Carrie is on board in her own special way.” Luke seems satisfied with the evasion. Maybe he, too, is familiar with Carrie’s recent... ah, temperamental behavior. “You need to convince Gia to talk with me.”

“I don’t think I—Carrie might be able to do it,” he concludes hopefully.

“Carrie isn’t in a convincing kinda mood at the moment,” says Veronica, and Luke’s hope sinks into a pitiful frown.

“If you want to know about his side-business, you’re going to want one of the girls to be convincing,” he replies. “They’re like, his best customers. Gia says he has the best... uh... purple something?"

"Purple something?"

"I told you I don't really use."

 _Sure._ “Does Gia know you’ve talked to me?”

Luke shakes his head. “I figured I’d wait to see what you have for me before I incur that...” He gestures nebulously, waving his hands in a sort of ball, “...Wrath. And what you have for me is _nothing_ , so...”

Veronica rolls her eyes, “Incur the wrath, Haldeman. How long are you in Neptune?”

“I was gonna drive back to school tonight.”

“Make it late. We’re going to do a team meeting tonight—and you’ll have to bring Gia.”

“I assume you’ll employ the same level of discretion and grace as you have this afternoon,” remarks Luke sarcastically, eyeing the busy courtyard. “Where did you have in mind for this _team meeting_? KFC, maybe? The steps of the county courthouse?”

Her dad’s voice pops into her head, _if you keep rolling your eyes like that, Veronica, they’ll stick:_ “Does Logan’s suite at the Neptune Grand have enough _discretion_ for you?”

“For me, sure. But Gia’s kinda _eh_ on Logan, too. The whole thing with her Dad going _kablooey,_ and you and Logan being there...” He shrugs.

“But she hangs out with _Dick?_ She does realize that Cassidy Casablancas was _his_ brother, right?”

“I don’t know, man—I think they imagine it like you forcing Beav to blow up Mayor Goodman and then shoving him off the roof.” Another resigned rise-and-fall of his shoulders. Veronica notices that the knuckles of her free hand are white, balled into a tight fist on her lap, and she inhales once, deeply, taking in the smells of the park—her latte, a coffee cart across the way, the grass, the breeze, Luke’s expensive, liberally applied cologne... “You still want me to bring her over?”

 _No_.

“Yep.” She pushes herself up off the bench, then turns back to face Luke, “Seven o’clock.”

“You can’t make it six?”

“No, I’ve got plans.” She takes a step to leave, but hesitates: “About Dick. Does he know?”

Luke shakes his head. “Lucky bastard passed out before anyone else,” he says regretfully, and Veronica nods. She takes off, not out of earshot of Luke’s heavy sigh before she’s pulling out her cell phone and punching the speed dial.

“Hi,” greets Logan’s voice—expectant, wary, almost a question. “How’d it go with Luke?”

“Fine. He’s a total prep now, by the way. He could be a John Hughes villain.”

“Finally I’ll have someone to exchange petty, menacing one-liners with.”

“Did you talk to Carrie?” Veronica asks.

“Yes.”

“And?”

“I’m an ass, apparently.”

“This is news?”

“You know, there are, in this world, people who find me charming and engaging.”

“Coma patients?”

“And good detectives.”

“You’re an ass.”

“This is news?”

Veronica smirks. Sometimes she misses—well, anyway, there’s no point in... “Luke and Gia are coming over to your place at seven tonight. Make sure Carrie’s there.”

“Yep.”

She hangs up first.

 

 

 _It’s a sad, sad day that I have to peruse the cheesy, forced nostalgia that is the documentation of the_ worst _years of my life_ , Veronica thinks, glumly flipping through the pictures of her senior yearbook.

It’s a quarter to six, and she’s hunched over a corner table in Micah’s—a hip, “world food fusion” café that Piz has deemed “their place,”—with her laptop covering half the table and a stack of old yearbooks occupying the rest of it. On the laptop, she’s already downloaded the entries to two years’ worth of Stuart Cobbler’s LiveJournal entries—mostly analysis of heavy metal lyrics, with one impassioned essay on what makes Anime chicks so (and this is his word) _fuckable_. That’s been an enormous waste of her time as it is, and the yearbooks don’t seem to be providing much more insight: besides the class picture, featuring a pockmarked seventeen-year-old rocking some serious Severus Snape hair, she finds only one candid of Cobb, standing near the dumpsters with the uncool burnouts... a group that seems to have fallen in the relatively small margin of students never cool enough to know Pep Squad Veronica, but never dangerous, desperate, or even well-informed enough to cross her path in later years. Cobb wasn’t in any clubs or teams, never received any special honors, and possessed no apparent desire to be photographed.

 _Not a joiner_.

Veronica sets down the senior yearbook and picks up the green and yellow monstrosity that is the freshman edition. It’s the only one of the four that has any writing in or on it; the pages of her sophomore through senior yearbooks being unblemished by popularity or overwhelming school spirit. But this book is proof that Veronica Mars was once _popular._

Lilly is all over it—a huge, bubbly paragraph taking up most of the first page, proudly declaring that she, Lilly Kane, will be the first and best signer of this document. Her writing appears a dozen more times throughout the book, concluding with a dirty limerick on the last page. Duncan—never much of a writer—penned something that aimed for romantic, but was at least very neatly written. Veronica only makes it halfway through these sentiments, before her eyes fall on a signature at the bottom of the _Autographs_ page. Crammed beneath Casey Gant’s non-committal “ _You’re the best, Ronnie!”_ and Wanda Varner’s “ _XOXO”_ is the red-sharpie John Hancock of none other than Susan Knight. It’s encased in a heart with the message, “ _Had so much fun in A.P. English! Let’s hang out this summer!!”_

It leaves Veronica cold. She didn’t know Susan well—ninth grade A.P. English being one of the only things in the world that they had in common—and Susan turned against her with the rest of them, come winter of tenth grade, but she’d written in Veronica’s yearbook, and... well, it leaves her cold.

Veronica tears her eyes away, choosing instead to find Logan’s loopy initials in the top corner of the page, as though he were too cool to author a real message. She knows better, though. She’s supposed to be looking for Cobb, but that doesn’t stop her from flipping back through the theater department’s section; they’d put on a predictably bad rendition of _Oliver!_ that year, and, scrawled along the top margin, over snapshots of 09ers dressed as pickpockets, is Logan’s handwriting (sans signature): “No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.”

“Today’s inspirational message,” she mutters to no one but herself. Then she flips back to see Cobb’s class photo.

His hair is shorter here, and he’s actually smiling. He looks as though he hasn’t hit puberty yet, being small and waiflike, and Veronica finds him again on the Band page and eating his lunch with some other freshmen on “Around Campus!” (page thirty-two).

She’s wondering how difficult it would be to filch his school file when Piz arrives for dinner.

“Reliving the glory days?” he asks, spotting the cover of one of the yearbooks. Veronica shakes her head and closes her laptop.

“It’s for a case,” she explains, shutting the book as well, and Piz offers to go order at the counter for them.

“Super burrito with extra jalapeños?” he asks, and Veronica nods. “You’re so predictable.”

In this case, Veronica doesn’t mind being predictable. The super burrito with extra jalapeños is a _masterpiece_ , and, incidentally, the only thing on the menu that she really likes. She packs up the rest of her belongings, and Piz returns with a white plastic order number card. He sets it on the edge of the table and joins her.

“Is Wallace coming?” she asks.

“He’s running late from basketball, but he’s on his way,” Piz tells her, sliding an empty soda fountain cup to her across the table. “Hey um...” he clears his throat, and begins in that fake _I just remembered something_ voice that people sometimes use, “have you thought about Portland for Christmas anymore? Because you should probably get your tickets sooner than later—they’ll only get more expensive.”

“Yeah. Yeah...” She rotates the cardboard cup in circles on the table, “Yeah, it’s just... the thing about Christmas, is my dad...”

“Well it doesn’t have to be Christmas! New Year’s would work too... or even after!”

“Yeah...” She wonders how bad it is that she’s not making eye contact, “I...” But then Wallace shows up and the conversation gets shelved.

Their friend drags a third chair over to them and drops into it, tossing a gym bag onto the tile floor at his feet and immediately throwing his head onto the tabletop.

“You alright there, Chief?” asks Veronica, smirking at an amused Piz. Wallace, without rising to do it, shakes his head.

“I swear if you’ve taken me to some Green Peace vegetarian place that doesn’t have a damn cheeseburger...” he begins, voice muffled in his arms, and Piz hops up again.

“The lamb burger is amazing here, just wait...” And he trots off to order Wallace’s dinner. When he’s gone, Wallace lifts his head enough to direct it at Veronica, and exhales loudly: “And how are _you?”_

“Oh—riding high in April,” she offers with a shrug, and Wallace rolls his eyes.

“I don’t understand a damn word you say.”

“How was Thanksgiving?”

Wallace props his head up on the palm of his hand. “Fine. Get this—Darrell’s in love.”

“Stop it.”

“He’s going _on_ about this Bethany girl for _hours_...”

“He’s eight!”

“...Says he’s going to ask her to be his girlfriend...”

“Kids these days!”

“It’s crazy, V. When I was eight, you know who I was in love with? Michael Jordan.”

“They grow up so fast,” says Veronica sagely, and Wallace chuckles.

“Hey, why _are_ we eating at this hippie fantasy anyway?” he asks, looking around. “Mac isn't even here. And it smells like feet.”

Veronica hushes him. “The only thing that smells like feet here is your gym bag.”

Wallace snorts and glances down at the offending bag, in the process spotting the binding of one of the books that sticks out of Veronica’s purse. “Hey, is that a yearbook?” He reaches for it and chucks it out onto the table before Veronica can respond, just as Piz returns from his quest with a second plastic order number.

Wallace has selected their eleventh grade yearbook, and his eyes twinkle as he flips through the pages, then shoots a look to Veronica: “Getting sentimental on me?”

“That’s Wallace’s first year at Neptune,” Veronica sidebars to Piz, then replies: “It’s for a case.”

“Damn, V, did you get _any_ signatures?”

“You do _remember_ junior year, right, buddy?”

“Yeah—hey what’s the case?”

Veronica frowns. “Nothing exciting. Just some money stuff for Luke Haldeman.”

“So why’d you need the yearbook?” Veronica doesn’t get the chance to reply to that either, as something occurs to Wallace a moment later, and he cuts her off: “Hey, Piznarski says you rescued Carrie Bishop from a bar after his show last week?”

“‘Rescued’ seems to be putting it a bit strongly,” says Veronica. “But we found her, yeah.”

“Crazy. I remember a time when you made it your life’s mission to take _down_ Carrie Bishop.” Wallace grins, and Veronica wishes this conversation would just end already. Piz has other plans:

“What? Why?”

“Carrie claimed she was hooking up with our history teacher,” Wallace informs him. “Like, full on accuses Mr. Rooks _right_ in the middle of class. It was ballsy. V didn’t buy it.” He jerks his head in Veronica’s direction, and Piz looks between the two friends curiously.

“So was she having an affair with the teacher?”

“No,” says Veronica succinctly, and Wallace rolls his eyes.

“Tell the whole story.”

Veronica groans. This is _not_ how she wanted to spend the evening. “She wasn’t having an affair with the teacher, she made it up because Mr. Rooks impregnated her best friend, Susan.”

The humor suddenly fades from Wallace’s face, and Veronica knows that he must have realized: “Hey, was Susan the one who...?” Veronica nods, and Piz picks up on it.

“The girl on the boat?” he guesses, and Wallace says _yeah._

“You know it’s messed up, that’s _three_ kids from our class, just since graduation,” he goes on sadly. Veronica frowns, trying to remember. _Three_? _That can’t be right._ Except—

“He wasn’t in our class,” she says abruptly, “He was younger.”

“Not _him_ ,” Wallace shakes his head, then elaborates: “Matt Calles from the baseball team… hit by a drunk driver like a week after graduation...”

 “Right, I remember that. Who was the second one?”

“Darcy Resnit,” says Wallace, as though it’s obvious.

There’s a moment, Veronica hasn’t heard the name in so long, it takes a moment for the pieces to click into place, but then they do: Darcy Resnit—school choir soprano, one-time girlfriend to Kool-Aid sippin’ Casey Gant, she—along with half the school—once paid Veronica to dig up dirt on her parents...

“ _Darcy_?” echoes Veronica, stunned. “She—I never heard that! What happened?”

Wallace shakes his head sadly, “Yeah, V, last year. You didn’t hear? I dunno, everyone says...” He averts his eyes, uncomfortable, “She did it herself.”

 _Suicide? Darcy?_ “Why do they say that?” Veronica searches her memory for the last piece of information she had about Darcy Resnit... comes up blank, only, she thinks they had Honors Calculus together senior year, and it seems like maybe she was celebrating a college acceptance one day that spring... “Wasn’t she at Georgetown?”

“Something like that, but she was here when it happened. I heard about it at that big party Jimmy Day threw last winter—you didn’t go, ‘cause...”

“Because I’d rather gag on a spoon than go to a party that Jimmy Day threw for jocks and 09ers?”

“Well it’s not like you didn’t have some other stuff going on last winter,” Wallace points out. _Right—Mercer, Logan, Dean O’Dell..._

They’re all three quiet for a moment, but the arrival of their food spares them from trying to rehabilitate the conversation.

Wallace closes up the yearbook again, the bearded face of the Neptune High Pirate scowling up at them, and Piz mutters: “It really _does_ stand on a hellmouth.”

 

 

From her bedroom— _Dick’s bedroom_ —Carrie hears a knock on the outer door at a few minutes to seven, and she knows what’s coming now. She hears Logan shuffling around out there, then the opening and closing of the suite door, and some mumbled conversation. She thinks she recognizes Veronica Mars’s voice, making Neptune’s own Encyclopedia Blonde the first of several unwelcome arrivals.

Carrie closes her eyes, then opens them again to her reflection in the mirror atop the dresser. She cleaned herself up for this: make-up, a pretty grey wool shift dress, knee-high boots, and one hell of a game face. If she’s going to get through this evening, she’s going to need that last one.

When she shoves into the next room, Carrie makes a lot of noise, stomping her feet and almost slamming the doors, because she’d rather avoid _walking in_ on anything between her host and his newest guest. The effort proves unnecessary: Veronica sits on the couch, glances up at Carrie’s entrance, but doesn’t appear in the least surprised or abashed, and Logan is wandering in from the kitchen. Neither looks to be particularly _caught,_ and Carrie wonders if she actually hoped they would be.

Logan says “Veronica,” and tosses her a bright orange soda bottle. Veronica catches the drink, and then twists back to face Carrie again. It’s distracting, so automatic and graceful a movement, that Carrie almost doesn’t notice Veronica’s addressing her with a reasonably stilted, “Hi.”

 _Game face_ , she thinks.

“Hi.”

“Want one?” asks Logan; he’s talking to her, to Carrie, and _no, because_ _she’s not twelve, and who even still buys Skist?_

“I can get it,” she replies, and she puts a little hop to her step as she strolls past him into the kitchen, plucks one of the sodas from the fridge, and spins back to the others, hip-checked against the countertop.

“So Logan told you what’s going on here tonight?” asks Veronica as she gets to her feet, makes her way closer.

“Yep.” The loud _TSSSS_ of the seal on her Skist breaking punctuates the response. “And I think you’re both idiots. And I think Luke is an idiot for going along with you idiots.” Logan and Veronica exchange a look, “But if you want to go ahead and be idiots, I can’t stop you.” She doesn’t miss a second look passed between the pair of them either—it’s a quick jump of Logan’s eyebrows, a _what did I tell you?_ kind of expression that Veronica receives with a tight nod, and Carrie is surprised that she catches the interaction, much less translates it.

They’re silently remarking on the near one-eighty in her reaction to Veronica’s taking the case. Carrie knows this, but hopes they’ll be too pleased to be circumspect.

“Will you help?” Veronica asks pointedly.

Carrie considers, then shrugs. “Why not?”

For a moment, it looks as though Logan will comment on that, but then there’s another knock on the suite door, and then he’s admitting Luke Haldeman and a fuming Gia Goodman into the room.

Luke looks more or less like he always does, dressed like Roger Latimer and wearing a vaguely pouty expression; Gia is done up for a night on the town, in a shiny black dress that stops mid-thigh and a tight, bright turquoise cardigan with a large crocheted flower over the heart. She folds her arms, completely ignores Veronica and Logan, and stalks up to Carrie.

“He told me we were going to Cube,” she snaps, glaring daggers across the suite at a weary Luke. “He didn’t tell me the truth until we were in the elevator.”

“You made it all the way to the elevator without catching on?” Carrie asks, bewildered, but Gia just shrugs.

“I thought we were making a pit stop.” She twirls around, her lithe, pale arms still folded over her belly, and she strolls toward Logan and Veronica. Luke has slipped past them all into the kitchen, and he emerges from a brief battle with the contents of the refrigerator, victorious with a beer. “Veronica and _Lo_ gan,” Gia drawls, and Carrie can’t help but roll her eyes at her friend’s dramatic tendencies. “Haven’t you already done enough to ruin my life?” She tilts her head to one side, like she genuinely wants an answer.

Veronica appears to be praying for patience, and at last manages a half-pained: “Hi, Gia."

“It’s going to be a very long evening,” mutters Logan. Carrie is inclined to agree.

They all sit down then—Logan and Veronica on one couch, Gia and Luke to their right, and Carrie across from Gia, who slouches in her seat, refuses to uncross her arms or legs, and isn’t so much glowering at Veronica as trying to telepathically _will_ her spontaneous combustion. While they all situate themselves, Veronica murmurs something to Logan, inaudible to the rest of them, and there’s a brief, muted exchange, which ends with Gia clearing her throat loudly.

“A- _hem_ ,” she actually says the word, and so Veronica concludes her business with Logan, and Logan leans back on the sofa, looking on. “Did you just invite us over here so that you could whisper with your boyfriend in front of us?” Gia demands, and Veronica takes a deep breath.

“Luke wants to hire me, Gia,” she begins, “And I can possibly help the three of you. I _want_ to, but it’s not going to work—and it’s not worth my time, if you don’t want me to do this.”

Gia makes a disbelieving sound, doesn’t meet Veronica’s eye at all as she asks: “You can get rid of the picture?”

“It’s—it’s extremely difficult to get rid of a digital file like this one...” (Gia scoffs again, but Veronica soldiers on) “...And Cobb’s clearly been planning this for weeks—months, even, so he’s probably come up with alternate plans, stored copies of the picture...”

“Well then what are we...?”

“There are other ways to make sure he doesn’t ever use the picture,” Veronica continues, looking from Gia to Luke to Carrie. “Other ways to guarantee that he has a vested interest in keeping you happy.”

Gia fidgets. She still won’t look anyone in the eye and instead watches the bouncing toe of her sparkly black stiletto. They’re all waiting to see what she’ll do next, and probably Gia knows this and enjoys the attention, because she draws out the silence. Then, it’s almost reluctantly that she kills the suspense and asks, “What ways?”

Veronica’s relief is palpable. “Well—for instance, I know Cobb is a dealer, right? What kind of product does he move? Luke said...” She glances at Luke, then to Gia again, “Valium or Vicodin?”

 _Please_. _That’s the children’s hour in Stu Cobbler’s medicine cabinet._

Carrie meets Gia’s gaze across the room and knows Gia is thinking the same thing. Before either of the can say anything to that effect, however, they’re interrupted by the front door. The lock clicks first, then it swings open to reveal Dick Casablancas. He’s dressed for cold weather—ski pants, a thick hoodie (sporting " _CALI"_ in bold block print), and a maroon, knit beanie, from which his fringe of platinum hair sticks out. Slung over one shoulder is a black duffel bag, and upon seeing the crowd gathered in his living room, Dick ejects the bag and spreads his arms wide, as if trying to envelope them all in a hug.

“Whassup, guys?!” And he actually sounds excited, bless him, until his eyes fall on Veronica, and his enthusiasm dims exponentially. “Uh—seriously, what’s up, guys?” he asks, but he’s looking at Logan for the answer.

“You’re back early,” Logan notes, which is both true and a decent deflection, because Dick closes the door behind himself and struts into the room, circumventing the sitting area altogether in favor of the kitchen.

“Yeah, well, I met a _fox-ay lad-ay_ in San Fran last night, lookin’ to hitch a ride to L.A. today, so...” He splays one tanned hand over his chest and gives a slight bow, “Gentleman that I am, I rented a car and drove back early. Nine hours _with_ an _interlude_...” He wiggles his hips to demonstrate, “In Bakersfield.”

“Yuck,” says Veronica, at the exact same time that Gia exclaims “ _Ew_.”

(Though, if Carrie has to bet, she’d say their disgust stems from different triggers—Veronica’s for “interlude” and Gia’s for “Bakersfield.”)

“That’s _not_ what she said!” Dick assures them. He opens a beer on the side of the counter, the cap springing through the air and landing with a clatter somewhere on the floor, and as he takes a sip, he casts a speculative look around the room. No one knows what to say or do, least of all Carrie, but it’s clear that he’s waiting for something. “So—what gives? Is this like—the Committee to Plan the Worst Party Ever or something because, y’know...” He gestures at them with the neck of his beer bottle, “I feel like you guys would be good at that.”

Gia and Luke are sharing looks, so are Logan and Veronica, but Carrie focuses on a loose thread hanging from her dress. She knows what happens now, what silent consensus is being reached, but every fiber of her being resists it.

 _Don’t tell Dick. Don’t tell Dick_ , she’s praying over and over in her brain, _Please don’t tell Dick_... because when Dick knows, then it’s _really_ real. When Dick knows, there’s no one left who believes the lie...

Unsurprisingly, it’s Logan who starts them off. Hasn’t it been Logan starting this thing all along?

“Dick, you should probably sit down,” he says. Gia closes her eyes; Luke leans forward, braces his elbows against his knees. Veronica fidgets, crosses and uncrosses and recrosses her legs, and only Logan ( _wonder of wonders_ ) is still, as he waits for Dick to take the seat beside Carrie. No one has the strength to offer even perfunctory laughs at his “ _Uh-oh, who’s pregnant?”_ joke.

Dick settles in on the couch, and a few laden but wordless seconds pass, as Logan figures out how to begin.

At the very last moment, Carrie decides she can’t take it. She rises hastily from the couch, conscious of five pairs of eyes following her as she rushes from the room. They can tell Dick whatever they want, but they can’t force her to listen to that fucking story one more fucking time.

She closes the door to his bedroom behind her and then stretches out on the bed, rolls onto her side, and closes her eyes, and—

_Fuck._

Dick’s back. Dick’s back and he’ll want his room, and that means... that means that she has to go out there and play nice, because her back-up living accommodation for the next... nineteen days is _Gia_ , who isn’t, in all likelihood, president of the Carrie Bishop Fan Club right now.

Conversation sneaks into the empty bedroom anyway—nothing distinct, but Carrie knows what they’re saying, what they’re talking about. They’re talking about Susan being dead, they’re talking about how they all killed Susan, and then they’ll be talking about how Cobb’s the Big Bad Wolf trying to make them pay for it, and maybe they’re right, maybe they don’t deserve this, but—

God, Carrie just wants them all to _go away_. Stop existing. _Fucking evaporate_.

She picks up her cell phone from the night stand and clicks through her texts, just to distract herself. That helps. In nineteen days, she’ll be able to get away from all of this. Maybe not for good, but for now, and that’s damn good enough.

It’s only a devious little voice in Carrie’s head that wants to know, _what if Veronica Mars_ can _solve this?_

But of course she knows that it’s impossible. Hell, _Veronica_ knows that it’s impossible, knows that Cobb has probably thought of it all, that he’s ready for this. Veronica will try to get them to agree to some kind of mutual blackmail situation, and it’ll just add another level of complication. More guilt, more worry, something else plaguing her soul—

She squeezes her eyes shut, lies to herself: it’s not real. It’s a terrible, terrible nightmare. Not real. Over soon, not real, _everything is fine_...

Some minutes later, the _tick_ of the double doors opening and the _click_ of them closing brings Carrie back to the present. She suspects it’s Gia, but then opens her eyes to see Logan standing there, leaning against the handle, steady brown gaze fixed upon her.

Carrie unfurls her body, rolls onto her back, props herself up on her elbows, and peers across the room at him. “Are you doing this because you want to fuck Veronica Mars?” she asks. She’s genuinely curious. Logan’s expression is blank, just blank, but he shakes his head. “Are you doing this because you want to fuck _me_?” she suggests, smirking, and Logan lets out a breath of laughter. “That’s not a _no_.”

“No,” he tells her. Carrie sits up a little more, holds herself up so that the flats of her hands are pressed into the mattress beneath her.

“Are you doing this because you have _serious_ mommy issues and just can’t help yourself?” she asks. Logan leans further back against the door, so the top of his head strikes against it; he crosses his arms over the black, long sleeved thermal tee he wears, and slings one ankle over the other. Sometimes—in certain lights—there’s something _gorgeous_ about Logan Echolls.

“Probably,” he says. There’s a long pause, and then he shrugs. “It could just as easily have been me on the boat.”

But that? That she doesn’t buy. “I doubt it. This isn’t your style of fuck-up.”

“It’s not yours either.”

“I had an off night,” she tells him, keeping her tone nice and bitter, because that’s better than crying. She sits up, pushes her legs over the side of the bed so that the toes of her boots rest on the floor. “Is Veronica Mars going to save us all?” she not-quite-mocks. Irrationally, _insanely,_ Carrie thinks she might believe him, if Logan said _yes_ right now.

“Or die trying,” he says.

Carrie gets to her feet and strolls across the bedroom. “Then let’s get this thing started.”

Logan pulls open the double doors, walks backward through them, back into the madness.

“It won’t work!” Gia is emphatically stating, wringing her hands and pacing. “He _knows_ it won’t work! Luke, tell her it won’t work!”

Luke is busy in conference with a bewildered Dick. He waves a disregarding hand at Gia and continues with his point to Casablancas Jr., “We weren’t trying to keep you out of anything, man, you were getting your stomach pumped when we talked with the lawyer and...”

“You didn’t think I deserved to _know_?”

And Veronica goes after Gia, “Look, if you overplay your hand trying to go after _every_ copy, every back up he has, you’re just going to piss him off even more! He has to believe that you’re angry enough to bring him down with you, and...”

“But he’ll never believe that!” Gia protests, and there are tears in her so-large black eyes. “Cobb knows—he knows we... he knows I can’t...”

Luke springs up from the couch, leaving Dick to sulk there. He paces around the coffee table to Gia and explains: “What Gia _means_ is that it’s too late for that. Cobb knows we’ll never risk the picture becoming public.”

“I’m just saying,” Veronica continues, “there are _alternatives_ to trying to destroy the evidence. I need all the information I can get on him, maybe there’s something there that I can use...”

“How do we know you won’t do something without our permission?”

“Dear God, I’m trying to _help_ you people, and—no, Logan,” Veronica holds up a hand to stay off Logan’s imminent attempt to intervene, “you and I are not friends right now—look, if everything you’ve said about what happened on the boat is true...”

“Of course it’s—you think we’re _lying? Luke, she thinks we’re lying!”_

“We’ve told you everything, Mars, we’re...”

“—Not saying you’re lying, my point is Cobb is _dangerous_...”

“Oh, ha, _really,_ Veronica Mars? Is he? Wow, thanks, I had no idea, it’s not like I’ve had to _sleep_ with him for the past...”

Carrie closes her eyes, allows herself a few, beautiful seconds of darkness, in which she can pretend this is a scene in which she has no role. Then she exhales, and speaks loudly, over Luke’s failed attempts to mediate Veronica and Gia, “Valium, Vicodin, ketamine, ecstasy, Xanax, oxy, ephedrine, coke, and speed.” Everyone turns to raise their eyebrows at her, and Carrie enjoys the reaction. “You,” she says to Veronica, “wanted to know what Cobb sells. That’s everything I’ve ever known him to get.” She locks eyes with Gia, “Does that sound right to you?”

Gia’s lower lip, coated in bright red gloss, trembles, but Carrie gives her a reassuring nod. Gia— _oh, poor Gia_ —mimics the gesture, perhaps unconsciously. “And weed,” she offers meekly, then sits down.

Veronica gives Carrie a quick, terse nod, then looks at Logan—another one of their secret, silent dialogues, it’s becoming a theme with them. Logan shrugs, Veronica sighs. “I won’t make a move on Cobb without talking to the three of you. And I—I’ll work the other side of the case. If there is any possible way to destroy the picture, I will do it. The important thing is to come up with a _plan_ and not spook him. Now, he lives over in South Ridge, so...”

“He’s moving this weekend,” Luke tells her, adding in a grumble, “ _I should know, I just paid the deposit on the freaking place_. He got an apartment on Burgout.”

“Burgout? How much are you people giving him?” Veronica wants to know. “That’s gotta be thousands of dollars a month. Does he have another source of income?”

“Did you miss the part about the coke and the oxy?” Carrie can’t help but snipe. “He wasn’t exactly _starving_ before we came along.”

“Do you know where he gets his stuff?”

“If we knew that,” says Luke, “he wouldn’t have been on the boat.”

“Are you gonna like—break into his apartment?” Gia wants to know, and it’s the first time she’s addressed Veronica without even a trace of hostility. She sounds... excited, almost. “Crack open his safe and everything? Like Charlize Theron?”

From Logan, in an undertone: “Yes, _exactly_ like Charlize Theron,” but Veronica ignores him:

“Uh—does Cobb _have_ a safe?”

“I don’t know, but probably, right?”

“Gia... when I say he has copies, I don’t think he’s just literally keeping a copy of the picture in a _safe..._ ”

“Whatever, I don’t know, but where _else_ do people hide stuff like this? Ooo, and he has a journal! I saw it, but I didn’t get to read it, but I bet he’s written down everything in there, if you could find that!”

“I’m sure he hasn’t written everything down in a journal, G,” Luke argues, but Gia maintains that it’s quite likely, and even Veronica doesn’t feel the need to involve herself in this inane conversation. She sits down on the couch again, folds her arms, and she’s chewing on her lip—thoughtful, the turning cogs are practically _visible_ , while Gia and Luke continue to spew every little detail they can conjure up about Stuart Cobbler.

Carrie thinks she’s going to be sick.

They’re all just so caught up in it now... _Gia_ is consenting to this—Gia who hates Veronica Mars more than any other living being, is willing to consider this insane plan. It should sway her—give Carrie pause, and maybe it does a little... she can’t quite explain why on an intellectual level, she can see the value in all of this, but her body reacts physically against it...

She spots Dick slinking out the sliding glass doors to the balcony, disappearing behind the gold glare and reflections in the window. Carrie follows.

He’s leaning against the railing, taking in the twinkling lights of the Neptune skyline—such as it is—but he glances back over his shoulder at her as she slides the door closed behind her.

His greeting, “ _’Sup,”_ is considerably cooler and more ironic than Dick’s usual persona. Carrie leans against the space of banister beside him, faced back towards the suite.

“Why’d you come out here?” she asks and pulls a cigarette from the pocket of her dress. She waves the pack at Dick, who declines with a flick of his beach blond bangs. “Don’t you want to talk about _the plan_?”

Dick shakes his head again. Carrie lights her cigarette, sucks in the warmth and then blows it out again, a pretty white cloud that shields her view of the others for just a moment.

He’s quiet—and it’s not like Dick to be quiet. Ever

“What?” Carrie asks.

He shifts his body, so he’s facing the suite again himself, still leaned against the banister behind them. “I can’t believe you guys didn’t tell me.”

“About Susan?” It’s shocking actually: that’s—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight consecutive serious words from Dick Casablancas--an incident as disturbing as it is unprecedented.

“Yeah about Susan! You—none of you told me! What, did you think I was too stupid to keep the secret?”

He’s offended. _Offended_. For some reason, Carrie hadn’t expected that.

“No, Dick, it wasn’t that.”

“Yeah right. I get it _, Dick’s an idiot! Can’t let him in on anything!”_

“ _Dick._ ”

“I’m serious, Carrie, you all treat me like I’m a fucking _child._ All you guys! Even Logan—I’m like, his only friend, and... you know he kicked me out of the hotel this summer? I had to live at the Pi-Sig house and they don't even have a fucking cleaning service... except once a week... the whole fucking summer! He only said he wanted me to come back after—Susan, y’know...”

“He kicked you out?” Carrie echoes. That doesn’t sound like the Logan thing to do, because maybe she doesn’t know Logan very well, but if she knows one thing about him, it’s that he doesn’t evict anyone very easily. “Why?”

“Just ‘cause I forwarded some stupid e-mail he didn’t like!” says Dick, disbelieving. He’s got nothing on Carrie in the disbelief department, though.

“An e-mail, Dick?”

“Okay, so it was Ronnie’s sex tape, but like...”

 _There it is._ Carrie rolls her eyes.

“What? They were broken up!”

“Dick.”

“Whatever, she’s got her tiny goblin hands so tight around his balls, he doesn’t even pick his fucking friends over the psycho bitch who dumped him for, like, no reason.”

Carrie watches her reflection in the glass, superimposed over the sitting area; she glances over to Veronica in the living room, talking with Luke now, though her stare drifts across the room, like she can’t help herself.

“Is that really what you see?” she muses softly.

“Huh?”

“Is that how you...?” she stops though, because there’s no point. She can’t teach a woman’s perspective to Dick Casablancas in just one conversation.

“But what the fuck?” Dick goes on, “I’m his _friend_... I’m supposed to be your guys’ friend too! Did you even care that I was on that boat too?”

“It wasn’t like that,” argues Carrie. “Not for me, anyway. We couldn’t—I couldn’t have told _anyone_. We didn’t mean... it was an accident, leaving you out of it. You weren’t there when we all decided on the story, when we talked to the lawyers, and...” Dick rolls his eyes, like he doesn’t believe her, but Carrie presses on: “It was just easier that way. It—it was like, if you believed the story, it was—it was kind of true. For me, whenever I heard you tell the story... it was true for you: you just passed out and the next morning she was gone, and that was terrible enough. I—I wanted your story to be real for me too.”

She glances up at Dick, and he’s affected, sure, even if he’s still glaring down at the scuffed white toes of his sneakers.

“But you’re right,” Carrie continues, “it wasn’t fair. We shouldn’t treat you like a child.” She pushes off the banister, stomps out her cigarette, and wheels around to face him, “So I won’t.” Carefully: “Dick. I cannot _believe_ that you are out here making this about _you._ Susan is _dead,_ Gia has to sleep with _Stu Cobbler_ , and you’re out here bitching because you feel left _out_ of the sad blackmail club? Grow up. Grow up, get your ass inside, and help your friends, for fuck’s sake. You want people to take you seriously, stop acting like a spoiled fucking child.”

She spins around and storms back inside, with Dick whining, “You’re such a _bitch_ ,” over her shoulder. Carrie smiles to herself, and Dick slumps in after her.

 

 

“And here’s my _other_ e-mail address, but like, Cobb didn’t use that one, but if you think it will help... and the password for that one is mrsjoshhartnet6 too, but with only one ‘t’ at the end, because I accidentally spelled it wrong and but then I was like, well maybe it’s more _secretive_ if I didn’t change it...”

Logan is smirking at her across the room, and Veronica can’t quite work up proper irritation with him, even as Gia heads into minute five of uninterrupted speech—which has to be some kind of record, seriously.

Logan is distracted from his amusement when Carrie emerges from the kitchen, places her own list of communications with Cobb on the coffee table, and sits herself down on the couch beside him. Veronica picks up Carrie’s list, while Gia carries on:

“Cobb doesn’t like to talk on the phone, so mostly if he wants to see me, it’s a text, and you can read all of those, and he’s totally weird, Veronica...”

“So does this mean I have to find a new place to crash?” Carrie’s voice—low and far less pitchy—somehow makes its way to Veronica’s ears... it’s not like she’s _trying_ to listen to Logan and Carrie’s conversation, though she’s suddenly having a lot of trouble focusing on the page in front of her.

“Depends,” says Logan—it’s years of practice that make his mumble audible at this distance, “How do you feel about fold-out couches?”

“They rank just slightly higher than my mom and dad, so...”

“ _—even lied to my therapist, Veronica, and I have to tell her everything. To be honest, she’s kind of a bitch, so maybe I’ll get a new one—“_

“—Could move it over to the corner, although you’re going to have to share a bathroom with Dick...”

“I understand you need room for all your hair care products, naturally, Echolls...”

_“Nah, that's priests, G, I saw it on Law and Order—”_

"Well you didn’t think all this just happens, did you?”

“ _—Whatever, and my mom has just been completely in her own little bubble world since... well, anyway, the point is—”_

“Carrie, I need your phone,” Veronica hears herself say, and Carrie looks up at her, surprised, then suspicious.

“Why?”

“To look at the picture. He sent it to you in a text message, right?” Veronica waves the piece of paper in her hands, though—truth be told—she has no idea if that information is actually on the page or not. “I need to see it.”

Carrie frowns, but she takes out her cell phone from the pocket on her dress and flips it open, clicking a few times to bring up the image. She half-rises to hand the phone over across the table.

The message comes from one of two numbers that Carrie has for Stu Cobbler. It’s not the same one Cobb seems to use for general communication—not the same one from Gia’s phone. Which is—interesting. Possibly he purchased a new phone for this specific arrangement. The date and time stamp are no surprise, either... just hours before Carrie went all  _rockstar_ on Logan's hotel room.

While Carrie is distracted by something Gia says, Veronica clicks back, out of the message, and into the recent calls on Carrie’s phone; there are half a dozen to and from someone named _Jack_ with a 206 area code. Veronica commits the ten digits of the phone number to memory, closes out, and tosses the phone back to Carrie.

“Thanks.”

“Not a problem.”

Cooperative Carrie, as Veronica has dubbed her this evening, is a lot more pleasant than other iterations that have surfaced over the last week. Rather enigmatic, though.

“Okay, um—well, it’s getting late,” says Veronica, collecting Gia’s and Luke’s lists from the coffee table and tucking them into her purse, “I’ll be in touch over the next couple of days. You two—” she nods to Gia at her elbow and then Luke, in the kitchen with Dick, “are going back to school, right? That’s good. It’s very important that if you _do_ talk to Cobb, you act like everything’s—normal. Or as normal as any of this is. All right?” They both nod. “Cobb’s moving into his new apartment on Saturday... does that mean any of you are going to see him?”

Gia frowns. “Why would we see him if he’s moving?”

“I don’t know: he’s trying to be your—pal or whatever? Maybe he’d call you to help him or...?” She trails off, because the utterly bewildered expressions on Gia, Luke, and Carrie’s respective faces indicate that this possibility is slim.

“Like...” Gia, puzzled, tries to figure it out, “...he’d want us to hire someone for him?”

 _Read the room, Mars_. Veronica throws her head back, “Have any of you ever actually _spoken_ to a member of the middle class?”

“Oh!” Logan raises his hand enthusiastically, “I think I saw one at the zoo once.”

“Mmm, me too,” Carrie agrees, “They have this really nice habitat for them now. So humane.”

“You’ll all be sorry when the class war comes,” Veronica swings her bag up on her shoulder, “Don’t call me, I’ll call you.”

Logan skips after her as she heads for the door, and when she’s passed through it, he slips his hands into the pockets of his jeans and leans against the doorframe as she turns back to face him. “So what’s next?” he asks.

“For you? Lay low. And make sure everyone else lays low, too.”

Logan shakes his head, so he must know what (and specifically _who_ ) Veronica is referring to. He’s quiet, so the others—chatting behind him—don’t overhear, “She’ll be okay. What’s next for _you_?”

“For me?” Veronica sighs. “Well, _apparently_ I have to come up with a plan to destroy a digital media file that’s probably been backed-up, duplicated, and transmitted in a dozen different ways by now.” Logan grins, as though she’s just said something exceptionally charming, and Veronica shakes her head to avoid copying him, “What did you drag me into?”

“I could say the same thing to you.” He pushes off the threshold, and Veronica turns to leave.

“Goodnight, Logan,” she says, and she doesn’t wait for a response before she heads down the hallway. His, “’Night, Veronica,” follows her to the elevator.

 

 

Her dad is working from home when Veronica returns from class Monday afternoon. He’s made a mess of the living room, papers and files and photos spread out on the coffee table and floor surrounding his space on the couch. Back-Up is curled into the easy-chair, eyeing the whole situation with the utmost suspicion, but her father only looks up and smiles at Veronica upon her entrance, a casual, “How was school?” serving as his reply to her raised eyebrows.

“Educational,” she replies, “What’s all this?”

 “There’s some construction in the offices across the hall from ours,” he says and waves a hand, “all that hammering—not conducive to deductive reasoning. Hey, did you know that there are no less than eighteen palm reading shops in Neptune?”

Veronica picks up the mail from the kitchen counter and begins to flip through it— _phone bill, junk mail, junk mail, postcard_ —“Only eighteen?”

“Eighteen with actual offices and/or storefronts. Plenty of private contractors who work from home, too...”

“Like yourself, apparently.” She sets down the mail. “So what’s the case?”

“Well, it involves a psychic, a millionaire’s wife, a missing diamond, and an escaped emu.”

“ _No.”_

“Yes.”

“How come you get all the good cases and I’m stuck with a boring background check on a guy who, I _hope_ , has a Walter Mitty-esque imaginative life, because his actual life is just _dull_.”

“Hey, you hand selected Tim Dooley,” says her dad, shuffling a stack of photos and sliding them into a manila file folder, “I would’ve been more than happy to let you handle Mrs. Von Hildebrand and the pet psychic.”

“ _Pet_ psychic? Now I’m really jealous.”

“Well pull up a chair,” He gestures, “Take a gander at the case file.”

“Wish I could,” she says and means it, because a little un-invested investigation is ideal Father-Daughter bonding material in Casa de Mars. “I got work.”

“The library?”

She could lie, but for whatever reason, decides not to. “Nope. A case.”

They’re similar like this, the two of them, because just the two words, _a case_ , grab his attention. Even though—as far as Keith knows—the only cases his daughter has worked in the last six months have been about as scintillating as her background check on Tim Dooley, just the possibility of a mystery piques his interest.

“Anything good? Pet psychics? Circus clowns?” She wonders if he really means _Gangsters? Rapists?_ but maybe not. Her father doesn’t look suspicious. Just curious.

“Trust fund kids and credit card charges,” she laments.  _Although..._ “So maybe you’re not too far off with the circus clowns.”

She trudges back to her bedroom, gathers up her camera, a couple of notebooks, and the pages of information she retrieved from Carrie, Gia, and Luke the night before. Then she returns to the living room.

“I won’t be late,” she says to her father, but she doesn’t quite make it to the door before he calls her back. “Mhm?” she asks over her shoulder.

He frowns, shakes his head, and runs his hand over the lines in his forehead: “Honey,” he begins with difficulty, and _oh no, I am not going to enjoy this,_ “We should—talk sometime. Soon.”

Veronica flashes her teeth in the smile she sends him, “Dad, I spend more nights with you than any other twenty-year-old girl in America spends with her father.”

“I know, honey, but—it’s not just that.”

“If there’s something you want to say to me, say it.” The statement comes off more aggressive than she wants it to, which is an amateur mistake— _come on, Veronica_. To cover, she sweetens up and asks: “What’s up?”

“That’s a good question,” replies her dad, clearly no amateur himself. “We should—I just—I want you to know that you can talk to me about anything.” _Amateur? Hell no. This guy isn’t just a professional, he’s an expert._ The knot of guilt in her stomach—Veronica’s near constant companion since her fuck-up handed Vinnie Van Lowe a badge—gives a powerful twist.

_Anything, Dad?_

_Where to begin? The sex tape, Jake Kane’s hard drive, two nights at the Neptune Grand, the Sorokins, the Fitzpatricks, one not-so-cured case of detective-itis? No thanks._

“Whatever you want, Dad. I’m an open book. We can talk whenever... except right now, because I really do have to go.”

He nods, closes his eyes for a moment, then offers her a bland smile: “Soon,” he says, and it comes out somewhere between a promise and a plea. Veronica nods.

“I won’t be late,” she repeats, then slips out and closes the door behind her.

 

Stu Cobbler lives in a beige ranch house on Lemon Grove Avenue. Neptune’s elusive middle class—what there is of it—resides here in the South Ridge neighborhood, comprised of your standard set of green-ish lawns, ten year old SUVs, and plastic garden tools. Veronica remembers house hunting in the area after Lilly died. It ended up being too expensive.

There’s a ratty old brown couch siting on the curb of 2734—Cobb’s address, and taped to it is a white sheet of printer paper that bears the instructions: TAKE ME _._ Someone has already absconded with one—but just one—of the cushions.

Stu lives here with two other guys about their age: Todd Daniels and Chase Fremont. Veronica knows neither of them personally, but their names are on the lease. Preliminary reports tell her that Todd went to Pan High and Chase was two years ahead of them at Neptune. They’ve been renting together for about a year. So, the question is, how much do Todd and Chase know about why they’re losing their third partner in crime?

Veronica parks her car across the street _Chez_ Cobbler, Daniels, and Fremont. Cobb himself isn’t home—the ’05 Sonata in his father’s name being conspicuously absent from street—but Todd, a scruffy, long-haired nineteen-year-old in a Pink Floyd t-shirt—brings out the trash bins just as Veronica arrives. She recognizes him only from his driver's license photo, but then again, she doesn’t really know many Pan High kids... a fact that might come in handy this afternoon.

Veronica flips down the sun visor mirror and touches up her lip gloss. She pulls her hair from a pony tail and shakes it out, her long, blond locks falling around her shoulders, framing her face nicely. She tugs the hem of her t-shirt, so the unassuming v-neck hangs just a little lower. As Todd disappears back into the house, she grabs her purse and climbs out of the car.

What she’d really like to do is rifle through the garbage bin that Todd has just situated so conveniently next to the driveway, but it’s broad daylight and someone would probably notice that. Instead, Veronica strolls up the cement path to the front door. She knocks twice, and it’s a bold move, sure, but she’s pretty sure Cobb isn’t here, and what the hell? _Fortune favors some folks, and all that jazz._

Todd’s face is blank for a few seconds after he opens the door to the perky, beaming blonde on his front stoop... and then he grins.

“Hey-ya,” he says, then strikes a flirtatiously casual pose, one forearm balanced over the doorframe, while the other hand hooks around a belt loop. Veronica continues to smile, brushes a strand of hair behind her ears, and then folds her arms over her belly.

“Hi,” she coos in response. “So this is really weird, I realize...” she slips effortlessly into this character, and a part of her _loves_ it, “But my cousin lives just down the street...” she points, but Todd’s still looking at her ( _Bingo_ ): “...And she said one of the neighbors mentioned the people in this house were moving... Oh my God, so rude of me: I’m Julie.” She sticks out her hand to shake, and Todd catches it, nodding absently.

“Todd. But, yeah, no, sorry—we’re not giving up the house.”

“No? _Damn_. Must’ve been a bad rumor. I like— _need_ to move out, my parents are driving me ca- _razy_ , and I like this neighborhood. So close to NCC and stuff, y’know?”

“Yeah, totally, totally, but yeah, no we’re not all moving. Just Stu—one of the roommates, he’s skipping at the end of the week.”

Veronica smirks. “Too many wild parties?” she teases, and Todd snorts. He shakes his head and runs a hand through his hair.

“Nah, we’re pretty mellow here. I mean like sometimes, maybe, but we’re pretty chill. Stu just got a bunch of money from his grandma, so he’s got some fancy apartment in the O9.”

“Must be nice,” sighs Veronica, and Todd shrugs.

“I guess. But, uh...” He shifts his weight, “We’re looking for a third roommate.”

“ _Really_? Uh—Todd, was it? And are you guys like—totally married to the idea of getting another guy to live here or...?” But Todd is obviously thrown by the colloquialism, his good-natured smile fading into confusing at the use of the word _married_ ; and _jeez, has it been that long since you’ve done this, Veronica?_ She cleans up the phrasing: “Like, would you consider a girl roommate?”

“Oh, yeah.” He visibly brightens again. “Totally. Julie—right?”

“Ya-huh. It’s—oh my God, this is totally weird of me, I swear I never do anything like this,” she covers her mouth, as though embarrassed, “It’s just the neighborhood is so close to the Community College and my work...”

“Oh yeah, where do you work?”

“Jamba Juice.”

“Oh, the one right over there?”

“Yeah!”

“No way, I go there all the time!”

“No _way!_ ”

“Yeah, I totally love smoothies.”

“Oh me too. Smoothies are the best.” _Dear God, please let this conversation end soon. It’s like reading the G-rated sections of Dick Casablancas’s diary._

“So good,” agrees Todd, and Veronica cranes to look over his shoulder.

“So, like—is your friend— _Lou_? The guy with the room...?”

“Oh, Stu.”

“Right, Stu, is he, like—here right now? I mean could I ask to see the room?”

“Ah—ya, no, Stu’s not here right now. He’s down in Skyline Hills for the afternoon. But I can totally show you the room, if you want.”

“Could you? I mean, I don’t want to be any trouble...?”

“Nah, no trouble, I was just playin’ Halo.” He gestures at the paused video game behind him, and Veronica smiles. She slides her purse from her shoulder as she walks past him into the living room, for easier taser-access should it come to that. She doesn’t think it will, but—still.

It’s not _terrible_ inside; the house itself is clean enough, just a few papers and envelopes on the counters, and a short stack of dishes in the sink. There are no chairs at the kitchen table and the floor could use an introduction to the broom and dustpan, but probably this group doesn’t sit down for many family dinners. The house itself is spacious enough, and Todd leads her through an additional family room before they reach Stu’s room. Veronica slips her cell phone from her purse.

The bedroom is immaculate; three packed suitcases sit in the corner, and the bed is faultlessly made. There’s an opened box half Veronica’s size, bearing the label _Geneva..._ Luke’s pricey stereo, no doubt. The shelves have been cleared, and a large cardboard packing box contains rows and rows of neatly organized CDs. Posters are rolled and captured in rubber bands, stacked in a pyramid next to the CDs, and the walls are left bare.

“Well, he’s just ready to go, isn’t he?” says Veronica. Todd leans against the doorjamb again as Veronica twirls about the room and takes in the sites—such as they are.

“Yeah, he won’t shut up about how glad he is to be out of South Ridge,” grumbles Todd. “But his lease doesn’t start until Saturday, so the sucker’s stuck here for a few more days.”

“You guys don’t sound like very good friends.”

“Oh, it’s not like that with Chase an’ me. Chase is the other roommate, we’re cool. But Stu’s been a total dick lately. He thinks he’s hot shit ‘cause his granny died and left him all that cash.”

“’Wish it would happen to me,” says Veronica, “Is he like—rich now? Did he get to quit his job?”

Todd snorts. “Stu didn’t even really work. His mom pays his rent here, ‘cause he told her he’s in school.”

“No _job_? God, I wish. So like, he just has tons of family money or...?” Veronica spots the laptop on the desk chair and memorizes the brand name. Beside it, capped in plastic and unplugged, is a little white flash drive.

“Not even. Not like, _rich_ rich or anything. Just, like—normal or whatever. But Stu...” Todd catches himself, frowning, “...just picks up odd jobs, y’know.”

_Dealing illegal drugs._

Veronica nods along anyway. “So where’d you meet the guy? Like some weird internet ad or something?”

“We used to be way better friends,” says Todd, “We went to camp together when we were kids. But Stu’s just got so full of himself now.”

“Oh, I totally get it. My friend Brit from high school—same thing.”

“Right? I hate that.”

“The worst.”

There’s an awkward silence, while Veronica pretends to check out the view, and then Todd clears his throat and asks: “So do you want a beer or something?”

“Oh, I don’t know, I gotta drive. Soda?”

“Yeah.” Todd claps his hands against his thighs and practically dances backwards, “I’ll be right back.”

When he’s disappeared, Veronica snatches up the flash drive next to the computer; she sees the brand name and _4GB_ printed on the side, but there’s no time for anything else. As much as she’d like to pocket the thing, she can’t clue Stu into the fact that she (or anyone) has been looking in on him.

She yanks open the drawer on the desk and finds a manila folder that sure looks promising but turns out just to be some paperwork for the power company. And then she hears Todd on his way back, and everything goes back where it belongs. She’s smiling vacantly out the window when he ambles into the room with a bottle of Coca-Cola.

“Oh.” Veronica takes the offered beverage, but frowns, “Do you have Diet?”

“Oh...” Todd looks genuinely crestfallen, and Veronica feels sorry for the guy, “Sorry, no...”

“It’s okay. I actually should get going. My cousin’ll be worried about where I disappeared to.”

“Yeah? Okay...” he takes back the unopened soda bottle, “So should I—get your number? About the room, y’know?”

“I’ll get yours. And, hey, you think I could get this Stu guy’s number too? In case I want to talk to him about subletting, or...?”

“Oh, yeah, sure.” Todd rattles off his digits, and Veronica puts them into her phone, under _Todd Roommate._ He has to check his own cell phone for Cobb’s number, and when he recites it to her, Veronica matches the digits to the number that Gia and Carrie provided for her—the general line, not the one he used to send Carrie the warning pic. They head out of Stu’s room, toward the front door.

“And that’s the best number to reach him at?”

“It’s the only number I got for him.” Todd shrugs for what feels like the tenth time since Veronica arrived in his house. “He got one of those douche-y new Blackberries, but I don’t even have that number. Some fuc—some friend, right?”

“Ugh, douchebag,” Veronica agrees.

"If you talk to him, uh... maybe don't mention I showed you his room? He's freakin' weird about his stuff."

"Oh, ya, totally." She reaches the front door. “It was so good to meet you, Todd.”

“Yeah, you too.” They shake hands again, and Veronica opens the front door and steps out. When the door closes behind her, she stays put on the porch, pretends to text, until she hears the unpausing of the Halo game within and the sound of simulated gunfire. She releases a breath, then walks back down the walkway.

Not a total wash, but—

She glances at the couch on the curb.

 _TAKE ME_.

Was the couch cushion missing _before_ they put it out, or did some jerk just come and steal only _one?_

—It’s not relevant to the case; Veronica is just curious.

She reads the sign again, then notices—

She rips the page off the couch, flips the paper over to the back, where something is printed. Some kind of receipt or packing list for an internet purchase of... _well isn’t that just wonderful?_

 

Veronica doesn’t return home early that night. She’ll be the first to admit it: she’s avoiding a confrontation with her dad. Whatever he wants to discuss with her, _no_ good ever comes from the introduction “We should talk.” He might as well have waved a red flag and worn a “STAY AWAY, VERONICA” t-shirt.

Once decided that she will not be returning to the apartment for dinner, Veronica mulls over her options only briefly. She has a perfectly good campus library, the Student Union, a dozen cafés, and a boyfriend’s ready-and-waiting dorm in which she can work... so, naturally, she chooses to park herself up the road from the River Styx.

Freddie Gibbons—the Fitzpatrick’s new bartender and Veronica’s possible link between the Fighting Irish and Sheriff Van Lowe—gets off his shift at ten o’clock, and Veronica figures tonight is as good a night as any to tail him... even if he’s not up to anything juicy this evening, she’ll at least be able to get a handle on his patterns.

In the front seat of the Saturn sits her purse, overflowing with textbooks, research manuals, and two spiral bound notebooks: one—for reading notes on her Psychology homework. The other—case notes.

Gibbons won’t be off his shift at the River Styx for another hour, so Veronica reclines the driver’s seat, orders herself some Italian, and locks the doors of the car. The notebook and case notes aren’t for the Fitzpatrick’s newest flunky, however; rather, in the glow of a streetlamp, Veronica scribbles headings on the top of four fresh, blank pages.

_Stu Cobbler_

_Luke Haldeman_

_Gia Goodman_

_Carrie Bishop_

She begins to take notes.

Luke poses the most obvious risk to Cobb, given his public position and his father’s connections. Cobb doesn’t want the truth coming out any more than the rest of them do; spilling the secret would be killing the golden goose. Cobb’s demands of Luke tend to be financial and social, and apparently he’s making them all _friendly_ -like... because Luke is not without protection if he’s pushed too far.

Gia, meanwhile, has the highest net worth: the quickest, easiest access to cash, and the _least_ protection. She’s already come into a huge portion of her inheritance, via the extensive life insurance pay out from the late, great Woody Goodman. Besides that, she has royalties and income from her father’s fast food chain, and a complicated network of trust funds that will click into place at various times in the next ten years.

Carrie, though...

Carrie is something of an enigma: Carrie is _cool._ Cool like it’s in her blood. She reminds Veronica of Lilly like that. She’s always surrounded by the fashionable, the elite—her dad’s PR connections mean Stu can pal around with celebrities, get into good shows, exclusive clubs... is that what Cobb wants from her? Or is she simply the leftover character from that little drama? Too involved to exclude from the blackmail, too fucked up to push to the edge... the most damaged by what happened to Susan and therefore—

 _“Liability_ ,” Veronica scribbles under Carrie’s name.

 _Whose, though_?

Veronica taps the cap of her pen against her lips, thinking...

The sound of a hand slapping against the glass pane of the passenger side window nearly gives her a heart attack.

She reaches for her bag (her taser) just as her eyes meet those of her guest, peering in through the cold-fogged pane. Recognition hits, her heartbeat slows to something that’s almost—but not quite—normal.

“Jesus Christ, Logan!”

Logan looks so thoroughly pleased with himself for having caught her off guard that Veronica is tempted to leave the doors locked in his smug face. Only persistent curiosity prevents her from doing so. She hits the locks on the car door and admits him into the front seat. She’s extra careful to look good and pissed off as he drops into her car like he owns it, shuffling her books and bag out of the way as he does.

“What is wrong with you?” she demands.

“Golly, Veronica, it’s like you’re not even happy to see me?” he pouts, focused on getting himself situated. He’s carrying a large brown paper bag, from which wafts a warm, delicious scent that half answers Veronica’s question before she even asks it:

“What the hell are you doing here? I’d make a stalking joke, but I’m genuinely concerned at this point.”

“Call it fate, then,” Logan breezes. He falls casually against the seat, reclines the back like it’s a natural extension of his body, and Veronica rolls her eyes.

“ _Please_.” She hits the locks on the doors again. “So you just _happened by_ and coincidentally spotted one of fifty silver SUVs parked in the dark? _On a street south of Watershed?”_

“That’s why you’re the detective.”

She jerks her chin at the paper bag, “Is that my fettuccine?”

Logan smiles a full, charming grin from which Veronica decidedly turns her head.

But then he says, “I tracked your cell phone,” and Veronica whips back to face him, eyebrows at her hairline and jaw at her chest. Before she can utter any of the dozen or so profanities that occur to her, Logan chuckles and shakes his head. “That was a joke, by the way, but the look of righteous anger on your face right now is beyond priceless.”

“I guess I can check you off my Christmas shopping list then.” Veronica composes her features. “So now you’re staking out my favorite Italian places. Fan _tastic._ ”

Logan begins, so slowly, to unroll the top of the brown paper bag, and heat emanates across the center console. “I wasn’t staking it out. I was just in line at Luigi’s, minding my own business...” ( _Ha)_ “...When the clerk stopped to take a phone-in order. And who but our intrepid girl detective would call in a double order of fettuccine with house sauce and extra parm...” He retrieves a Styrofoam take-out container from the bag and hands it along to an expectant Veronica, “to be delivered to the silver 2006 Saturn parked at the intersection of Driftwood and Third Avenue?”

Veronica ignores his boasting, “I also ordered a...”

But the thought goes unfinished, as Logan produces a roll of garlic bread wrapped in tin foil, which he tosses to her, and a bottle of Iced Tea, which he sets in her cup holder. Next, he withdraws his own take-out box.

“And they just _gave_ you my food?” Veronica demands. He gives her plastic utensils. “I should complain.”

“It’s _Luigi’s_ ,” says Logan, shrugging, “they know me there.”

“And they just _gave you my food_?” she repeats, and Logan grins.

“You’re welcome, by the way. It would have been another twenty minutes for the delivery guy to get here, and you’d have had to tip him. Not that I’m opposed to the prospect of tipping, but...”

 _He paid for this_ , she realizes, and extracts the cash intended for the delivery boy from the pocket of her jeans. Logan rolls his eyes, doesn’t reach out to take it, so Veronica tosses it into the still open paper bag on his lap. He huffs, put-upon, ( _damn drama queen_ ) but he pockets the money and for that, Veronica is grateful. He sets the bag aside and opens up his food—a divine-looking slab of lasagna with the extra cheesy garlic bread side.

“Take-out on a stake-out,” he remarks, nodding to their dark, less than reputable surroundings. “Daring.”

“The stake-out doesn’t start for another hour. The mark is on shift until ten.”

“No Back-Up?” he asks.

Veronica refuses to acknowledge the obvious judgment in his tone, and instead focuses on wrapping a long strand of pasta around the black plastic fork given to her. Of her beloved pit bull, she says: “He had to get some shots today, he was feeling cranky.”

“Yeah, but what about your dog?”

Veronica glares at Logan, mostly out of habit.

“I’m your ex, I really don’t know why you expect me _not_ to make that crack.” He settles in, begins to poke at his supper.

“Yeah, but every single time?”

“These are the jokes, folks.”

“Can they not be?”

“No.”

They eat in generally companionable silence for a few moments, but Logan, as always, is restless: “Who’s the mark? I assume you’re here for the Styx?”

“You’re fooling yourself if you don’t believe it,” she chants, but Logan ignores her joke, which isn’t fair, because _she_ responded to _his_ dumb wisecrack. She frowns. “No? The jig is up? The news is out? I got too much time on my hands? _Come sail away_?”

“If I sit in silence long enough,” grumbles Logan, speaking out of the side of his mouth not busy with lasagna, “will you eventually shut up?”

“History says _no_.”

Logan tries it anyway.

Veronica swallows a bite of fettuccine and tells him: “New bartender at Styx. He’s connected to Vinnie Van Lowe. Not sure how.”

“Then how do you know they’re connected?”

“They knew each other when they were kids in New Jersey. Then this guy—Gibbons—comes out to Neptune and immediately gets a job at the Fitzpatrick’s place. He’s got a record a mile long, too, and I think Liam’s using him for muscle. He might be the key to getting hard proof that Vinnie’s corrupt.”

“Huh.” Logan doesn’t sound convinced, though, which is annoying.

“What?”

“Nothing—but I mean, maybe Vinnie’s childhood BFF decided to move to California and Vinnie was the only guy he knew in town, so Vinnie hooked him up with a job working for the only people in town who could stand him.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s the whole story.”

 _Really, really annoying_.

Veronica takes a decisive bite of her pasta. “It’s a possibility,” she says, staring out through the windshield. Logan either doesn’t notice her tone or chooses to ignore it, but in any case, the next thing he says is a change of subject:

“What’s this?”

Veronica looks over to see that Logan has picked up a sheet of paper from the floor—something that fell out of her bag in the effort to make room for him, no doubt, and Veronica grabs the corner of the page to see what it is he’s found. It’s the _TAKE ME_ paper from Cobb’s couch... Logan has already flipped to the back.

“Amazon packing slip,” she tells him, turning back to the street. “Stu Cobbler is a diligent recycler.”

“Who buys _forty_ flash drives?” Logan wants to know, reading over the receipt. “Why would—?” He stops when he realizes exactly what Stu Cobbler would want with forty flash drives, and Veronica nods.

“Yep.”

“Fan _tastic_.”

“No one said it’d be easy,” she reminds him. “In fact, the word I used was ‘impossible.’”

“Isn’t ‘Impossible’ your middle name?”

“‘Danger’ actually.”

“Ah. One forgets these things.”

They settle into their meals again, and it’s not too bad for a few minutes. She forgets, sometimes, that it can be like this with Logan. It’s simpler not to focus on the times when it was quiet between them—not because they were so terribly rare. Just—

“Hey,” she breaks up that train of thought with something that’s been bothering her for the last twenty-four-plus hours, “Did you know that Darcy Resnit from high school _died?”_ It nags at her, that detail, and the fact that she somehow _missed_ it... a whole year, and she just found out by accident...

_So what, Veronica? Darcy Resnit wasn’t anything to you..._

It’s just that—she’s made it her business knowing everyone’s business, and to somehow have missed that...

Logan’s plastic fork hesitates over his lasagna for a beat, and he doesn’t look at Veronica at all as he nods. “Yeah. Last Christmas, right?”

“Yeah,” and she wonders if he’ll understand this feeling, “no one told me anything about it! I just found out the other day from Wallace! Where did _you_ hear it?”

He exhales, glances up and away at the rays of streetlamp light before them, but there’s no doubt, no shame, no _nothing,_ really, as he tells her: “Madison Sinclair told me in Aspen.”

Veronica sucks in a breath and turns her eyes back toward the bar. Her fettuccine has suddenly lost its appeal, but it’s not the worst thing she could say when she replies with, “I guess that’s why you didn’t mention it.”

Logan just takes another bite of lasagna. Apparently he doesn’t find discussions of Madison Sinclair to be as unappetizing as Veronica does.

_Maybe now that he’s single, he’s taken Madison up on her offer to—_

She should call Piz. She hasn’t talked to Piz today. She should remember to do that before bed.

Veronica closes up her take-out box, wipes her hands on the napkins that accompanied it, and sets the container on the center console. Wordlessly, Logan sets down his own fork, picks up the paper bag that the food came in, and returns Veronica’s leftovers to it. Veronica watches out of the corner of her eye, but offers no comment, and he returns to his own dinner soon enough. He doesn’t leave, though.

 “That receipt was a month old,” Logan says after a while, “What do you think Cobb’s done with the flash drives?”

“Um—copied the blackmail picture onto them?” _Because: duh._

“ _Besides_ that, smart ass,” says Logan, rolling his eyes.

“I don’t know,” Veronica confesses. “They could be anywhere. I think Cobb is in this for the long term—he doesn’t want to take any chances. That’s why he waited until the media died down, until he could be really sure of his hand, before he contacted Gia and Luke and Carrie.”

“So what do we do? Find _forty_ flash drives, wherever they might be, and erase them?”

“Not erase them,” Veronica muses. “Replace them.”

Logan stares at her for a moment and then sighs, his head falling back to the seat.

“Well this should be fun.”

Veronica smirks. “ _Fun_ is my middle name.”

“Your parents should’ve consulted a dictionary.” Logan begins packing away his own leftovers, rewrapping the foil around the remainder of his garlic bread, tucking his utensils into the empty portion of the Styrofoam box. Veronica finds a balled up _Vons_ bag in the backseat and offers it to him for the transportation of his own leftovers.

“Even if we _do_ find all forty flash drives, there’s no guarantee he doesn’t have more,” Veronica carries on, “And I’m _assuming_ he’s got online back-up too. Just ‘cause—it’d be dumb not to.”

Logan nods, securing his food in the plastic bag, smoothing it over the edges of the container, “Could Mac hack that?”

“It’s not Mac’s prob—case.”

“But she might help if...”

“I don’t want to ask her,” says Veronica, more assuredly than she feels. She’s not positive she can _avoid_ employing Mac’s significant talents in this particular job. “That’ll be last resort.”

Logan’s still looking down at his plastic bag, but there’s a frown on his face now. “Did Mac complain or something? About you using her for cases?”

“No, I just don’t want to involve her.” _Or anyone else._ They’ve been over this before—not with the Carrie Bishop thing, but with Veronica’s other discreet investigations. Logan doesn’t get why everything has to be so hush-hush with her. He doesn’t understand—

“Does anyone know you’re out here, Veronica?” he asks, suddenly and very softly, and he’s looking at her now. Staring, really. It’s uncomfortable.

She buys herself a second, asks nervously: “What?”

Slowly, like she’s stupid: “Does anyone know that you’re sitting alone in your car, parked in a bad neighborhood, at nine-thirty at night, tailing a guy with—in your words—a mile-long rap sheet?”

Logan already knows the answer to that, so Veronica doesn’t bother confirming anything. She just sits there, avoids his heavy stare, and tilts her chin defiantly. Several seconds pass, and then Logan breaks his gaze, turns back to face the road in front of them.

“Jesus,” he mutters, and Veronica huffs.

“I don’t need a lecture right now, Logan.”

“I wasn’t...” He stops, pauses, and when he resumes, his voice just barely trembles, “I’m making this worse, aren’t I?” He asks it like he has just stumbled on some startling epiphany, but Veronica isn’t sure what it is he’s supposed to have realized— _making what worse_? “You’re never...” he begins to say— _what_ , she can’t guess, but it’s irritating anyway.

“No one asked you to come here,” she snaps, and Logan laughs bitterly at that.

“Believe me, I’m well aware.”

“So _go_ ,” she tells him, and he winces at the order, a sour, almost angry smile still bending his lips. He shifts in his chair, and Veronica can tell that he’s debating whether or not he should do what she says: whether or not he should just leave, already.

There’s a brief and shocking moment of panic, because she realizes that he _wants_ to leave. _He’s tired of this, tired of her, he told Piz he was glad that they_ —

Movement from the street entrance of The River Styx draws Veronica’s eye, and she seizes her bag from the floor of the car, where Logan moved it. Patrons have been filtering in and out of the bar for the last half hour, of course, but the man that Veronica sees slumping out through the front door seems to be the right height and shape for Freddie Gibbons, and she plucks her camera from her bag in time to zoom in on the guy’s face, seconds before he spins around back toward the door.

“Is that him?” Logan asks, the fight either forgotten or on rain delay. Veronica says that it is and watches as Gibbons is joined by the red haired weekday waitress, stepping out onto the street and slinging her arms around the bartender’s neck. They kiss briefly, then walk—his hand on the ass of her baggy, stonewashed jeans—to a car parked near the corner. Hers, probably: it’s a silver Dodge coupe, whereas Gibbons drives a rusted out brown Chevy Cavalier. Veronica snaps a picture of the license plate, but she knows there’s no point. They’re leaning against the passenger’s side door, making out. “Awww,” croons Logan, “Even hoodlums can find love.”

“There’s hope for you yet,” Veronica jabs, mostly to be a bitch.

“There but for the grace of God,” Logan replies. Gibbons and his date continue to kiss—with lots of tongue and lots of limbs, coming up for air after about a minute, and then they get in her car. Veronica sets down her camera. The waitress is a nobody (and if Veronica has studied the ins-and-outs of the Fitzpatricks’ organization, legal and otherwise, who can blame her?), and their rendezvous won’t get her anywhere.

“You mean you’re _not_ going to follow them on their one night stand?” Logan questions, sarcastic.

“There are some things you can’t unsee,” says Veronica, and that’s it: tonight is officially a total bust. Gibbons is going home with his waitress lady friend, not sneaking off to participate in nefarious activities that will give Veronica rock solid evidence against Vinnie Van Lowe. And she can add both a fight with Logan and the image of him emotionally bonding with Madison Sinclair to her magic bag of _Things That Make Veronica Feel Like Shit_.

She replaces her camera in her purse and pulls her car keys from the side pocket. “Where’s your car?” she asks of Logan, while she starts the engine.

“The 7-Eleven over there.” He jerks his head vaguely to indicate, and Veronica supposes he must mean the convenience store on Second Avenue. It’s not a long walk, but still:

“I’ll drop you off.”

“You don’t have to.” (But he doesn’t move to exit the car.)

“It’s fine,” Veronica replies.

She pulls into the parking spot alongside his Range Rover about ninety seconds later, but Logan hesitates before opening the door. He looks like he wants to say something, and Veronica wishes he would, because it might give her a clue as to what _she_ should say. But he doesn’t come up with anything, and he steps out of the car, just before Veronica manages: “I’ll be in touch about the case.”

Logan nods, hand on the car door, prepared to close it behind him. “Yeah,” he says, and then—inexplicably—“Thank-you.”

“’Course.”

Then he shuts his door and climbs into his own car, disappearing behind the dark tinted windows.


End file.
